#no one knows exactly what happened but the current narrative has made acts like this permissible

[duchessofostergotlands]

A baby could have seen something like this was coming

#british royal family #kate middleton #2024 #last time someone breached her medical privacy they committed suicide #this stuff has real consequences #no one knows exactly what happened but the current narrative has made acts like this permissible

[1-49]

송은석 : Tell the cameraman there’s no good side, they’re both attractive.

❝ your ace, your king, your double diamond. your jack of all trades, your 100 and one shades.

ᴘᴀʀɪɴɢ: actor! song eunseok × actress f!reader.

ɢᴇɴʀᴇ: romance. on set / gambling undertones as far as the film storyline goes. w.c 5k

two actors fatally ‘meet’ at a ‘casino.’ with the narrative centering round the ‘value of the moment,’ as the story advances, the ‘love on set’ becomes more evident thru the cameras. as the director realizes this early on, all of his retakes serve as both the actors’ main obstacle and unifying force in achieving their individual & character’s goals.

ᴛᴀɢꜱ: slight mutual pinning (?) both are kinda confused; mixed signals, ofc flirting. makeout :) i had MMA Eunseok on mind while writing this... the gloves and all.

ᴀᴜᴛʜᴏʀꜱ ɴᴏᴛᴇ: why i feel like everyones on sum Eunseok current rn? as if we re collectively riding that wave? am i not right? am i not!? it’s like homeboy was only getting comfortable up until now. or elsee y are his contents as of lately sooo attacking? idk why, but i feel like this type of situation goes so well w him?

this goes back and forth between the film’s plot and the real* on set setting. hope it’s not confusing

It feels like you’re wearing your seductive velvet dress just to let him down one more time. The never-ending takes of filming this movie and wearing the same clothes don’t help Eunseok at all; in fact, your attire has made him even more confused and hell crazed.

Drama, slash thriller, slash…

“Romance is for the weak,”

reads one of the script’s lines. Of course, there is nothing romantic about the way he has to portray the charismatic rival who must rob the same kingpin as you. You both need to be like loaded guns to figure out who will outsmart who. Without a doubt, this isn’t a game for the weak of heart.

Side from the fact that long shoots and endless days blur together, his constant presence both on and off set also distorts your perception and wounds your judgment. Though you know for a fact that it’s a waste of your time to catch vibes.

As you’re getting started & Eunseok is an A-list hitter, it is also completely out of the question. Moreover, even now, you find it surprising how you were cast for this role, but that was exactly what spurred you on to continue & demonstrate your abilities.

Though the weeks of filming went smoothly, as you 2 approach ‘a’ scene, tension is mounting.

But, now that you’re here, you’re reshooting and pacing around the same set of scenes, over and over. There is a clear build-up in tension and skin ship as the film goes. The way his hands would sometimes tighten around your waist, it seems like an old game. Practically, it’s the same same daily. 

It’s as if you have been thrown into a loop for a week. Monday through Saturday, which seems excessively intense because you have to look into his big eyes and act unaffected, just like your character. To pretend that you’re razor-sharp when you two touch and to act as though nothing is happening.

The latest take you took was three hours ago, before your lunch. Venue: the casino.

The casino set is unique in that it has distinct widths and depths, & it’s a character unto itself.

You’re shooting at a real place—a candid gambling place with walls painted in every hue imaginable, which is the main ‘bait’ factor. Nevertheless, the place’s real undercurrent is that it has the power to literally tear apart a person. Here, time and space are merely ideas, and much like love, everyone in the plot keeps playing in the hopes of hitting a jackpot. 

On the periphery are the people who have come here to escape reality, vibrant lights, music, drinks, and all things magnetic.

However, the more people indulge in these casino games, the more they immerse themselves in sin. The games have a concentric hierarchy, and the degree of wickedness increases gradually until it reaches the heart of the casino, where the money is kept in bondage and bound with a bloody ribbon.

In essence, the characters you and Eunseok play dance and mingle in the depths of hell.

As you both keep colliding in the games you play, what begins as an individual hunt becomes more focused. It’s the way that your objective in this round is to win jointly by lying. Still, at some point in the round, Eunseok’s character betrays you, but that is currently irrelevant, as you’re currently sitting on his lap.

And doing so, you scan the players in front of you. There are eight of them in total, some of whom have girls sitting on their laps as well. Some kiss, some clink their glasses, and some flirt with the person across. A ton of chips, cards, and cash are spread out across the poker table. 

Your character remains silent, just like Eunseok’s does. Distraction is something that neither of you wants. However, the fact that you’re sitting on his lap makes this already a deranged situation.

Players sling remarks about your character around the table in an attempt to break Eunseok’s character’s nerve.

“When will it be our turn to have our round with her, at last, exactly when?” Gesturing you both, one of the group members says, perched on the edge of the poker table. “Hm? We may need to take some action because you don’t really share your food here. We may need to bring bad luck to attract her.” The actor laughs narratively, but there is seriousness in the corners of his bright eyes that makes it seem like he is really after you, and there is nothing Eunseok can do about that. It is an amazing acting delivery from him.

And while his remarks are only meant to irritate Eunseok’s character, why does it feel like they also irritate the real Eunseok? Because his leg begins to twitch uncontrollably under you.

In order to stop letting his emotions show and to keep his mind to the job in hand, he needs to snap back into character quickly. He remains to cage you in a respectful manner, though, as his arms aren’t in contact with you because they’re both on the table.

So you have no choice but to put up with the sensation of his breath tickling the back of your neck, and the heat that seeps from his thighs and settles into you.

You feel imprisoned in his cage... On this set.

And, you start to appreciate the little things, like the thicker material covering your flesh, since it seems like your skin is getting uncomfortably slippery under your dress. 

Your back is glued to his chest, and his calm demeanor calms you down from the words and deeds of everyone around you—including the real extras from the close-up tables that swarm the set, adding realism to the scene and heightening the atmosphere.

You feel him place his hand on your thigh, something he has never done in previous takes of the scene, but he immediately lifts it. And as he moves his hand, the smooth surface of your dress wrinkles at the drag, making your heart want to leap out of your rib cage.

You lean forward until your elbows rest on the table in an attempt to escape the heat transfer that is becoming too strong between your bodies. More than that, there seems to be an off-energy between you two today that you can’t quite put your finger on. In either case, you’re unable to escape as his hand wraps around your waist and draws you back toward him. Simultaneously, it feels like his cold breath is making love to your throat as it swoops around your neck.

And so, you stay like this… in his arm... until he decides it’s enough, but Eunseok isn’t one to give up easily, so things continue this way. You simply can’t protest because that would ruin the scene.

However, even after going over the same scene several times, it didn’t stick, so the director agreed to let you unwind for the next few hours so that you could focus on the following scene.

And as absurd as it sounds, you might need to expend all of your energy on the next scene. You’ve become tired not just from your long work hours and endlessly repeated dialog lines, but also from being in too much close contact with him. And not to mention that the scene that follows is—

A loud “Action!” comes from somewhere across the room, past the cameras. You’re even deprived of the opportunity to summon all your bravery and take a deep breath. There is nothing you can do about the scene that is already in motion except follow your sync with Eunseok wherever it leads.

This time, the location is a 2nd floor room inside the casino with a glassed view of the floor below where all the ‘magic’ happens. In technical terms, the space you’re in right now is referred to as a ‘control room.’  

Control…..

With just the two yellow-toned lamps—one in the corner and one on the metal desk—the room is completely soundproof and somewhat dim. Additionally, the window glass also only sees out but not in, which promises that all intimacy will be trapped inside and not let out. 

…. If only you were allowed the right amount of privacy, 

but this is a film set, so naturally there are people inside who practically monitor every move you and Eunseok make in great detail.

They… Control…..

His suit jacket, which he had on earlier in the casino, is now draped across the brown leather couch, giving you more intimate time together and expanding his range of motion. And it’s all done purposefully. Everything is a part of the plan, as he’s deliciously in tune with your dress, too. 

His glistening velvet suit with diamond motifs fits the ‘rival notion,’ making him an ideal opponent—a fierce equal match for you. This is also reflected in the movie’s concept, which is to give the impression that this is a ‘pair game’ in which both of you are lying in order to get to the big ‘price.’

And all it takes to get there is for you to hurt each other in the process. There are jokes exchanged, teasing remarks, some lighter, some harsher, some even more vulgar, and swear words are thrown around, but neither of your characters ever lets up their confident façade. For they would be falling behind and losing the game if that were to occur.

As you gaze out the window, Eunseok is leisurely leaning against the desk, moving a silver-foil Ace of Hearts card between his black leather-gloved fingers and watching you. 

The games themselves give an adrenaline rush, and the lavish, spacious hall downstairs draws in gamblers, but the whole point of the script for him is that you’re a thrill sight and his object of desire. For someone made of steel, your whole sense of appeal lies in the fact that you steal his breath. 

The sleek black strapless velvet dress you’re wearing seems to be romanticized by the fake diamonds around the base of your neck. Your smoked eyes and glossed lips are your core points. You don’t long to impress. Your power lies in your strength and independence, but it’s also in elegance, solace, and trance. Another line says, ‘Simplicity is a killer,’ and you certainly are.

However, beneath it all, only you’re aware of how much of a mess you are because he is currently examining you.

... Still, it’s only acting. Eunseok is merely performing in his role as an actor. And, when acting, one can’t really let one’s true self show. As a result, cameras won’t be able to capture how hot you really feel inside or how confused; all you can hope for is that you don’t mess up your next set of lines.

And it’s that scene in the script where everything has built to a climax, and nothing is held back!

When neither of you can decide what brought you together—your shared dislike or your shared goal—and neither of you can explain the bad cues and inexplicable tension.  

Where your personal schemes about who will get the ‘shiny stones’ first are screwed by your shared greed and cynicism. 

When you two almost simultaneously blow up each other’s plans. 

And wherein, in order to make this work for at least one of you, you have selected a room to talk about the remaining options. In this case, the smarter one will really only be the meaner one.

This finally concludes the exchange of hurtful comments; there will be no more!

The door is the most attractive option, and the room is perfectly silent. However, it simply indicates that the first person out has raised the white flag and signed their lost. It’s impossible for either of you to succumb so easily.

Simultaneously, your character is the first to break the dense silence.

“Do you know where we’re going?”

With a rephrased and pointed question, “Where are you going with this?,” you look up at him then, looking a little disappointed and angry at the same time.

Coolly, Eunseok teases, “I’m trying to figure out if I should call it quits.” 

As an actor would, his hair is styled to perfection, and the two hair strands that fall into his eyes and give him a luscious appearance are actually just the result of the tireless efforts of the hair and makeup artists who never stop running after him. 

You find yourself ‘out of set’ for a split second, wondering what he’s like by himself. How he appears when he wakes up in the morning, how his hair looks after taking a shower, and how his body is dressed in a baggy, worn-out shirt rather than rich pajamas. However, that’s rather a ‘faraway’ Eunseok.

But the present, Eunseok, does he read you?

“You’re only saying that. But I won’t take the bait from you.” Your character is merely attempting to remind his of how he deceived you during the previous poker round. “In fact, I wish you saw you from my view. You ain’t all that, you know?”

Eunseok’s cool and calm demeanor remains unshaken. In fact, he just keeps on getting cocky. Given that you’re affecting him in ways he doesn’t understand, it’s in his character's self-defense mechanism as a means of continuing to taunt your character.

“Really,” he responds, crossing his gloved hands. His vest lifts at his tiny waist, and he tilts his head to one side in a seductive manner. The tone of his voice has been pre-calculated; every syllable has been worked on in detail. His precision in looking at you, moving, and facial expressions is unparalleled. 

“See, I’m good for the ego,” his words come across as too sultry, even though he’s the most soft-spoken he has ever been, “but I’m bad for the soul.”

If you two weren’t in front of the cameras, you’d have closed your eyes and allowed his words to give you goosebumps all over your body, but now isn’t the time to do that.

Not that they aren’t doing it already, either...

They’re actually doing that in real time. His voice, his eyes, and his tongue that digs and crawls at the inside of his cheek.

Just a cold-blooded actor. With every take, this terrifyingly skilled individual sends chills down your spine. You almost get the impression that he’s seriously flirting with you because of how excellently he is delivering his role. Nevertheless, the line is exceedingly thin, and the narrative is already in the script. Is it not?

You protest, looking frustrated, saying, “Your games are endless,” yet still simultaneously approaching him more closely to show that you aren’t afraid of him.

Actually, you and him are on the same level. And to add spice to the situation, you say, “However, this time, we both know that you’re going to lose.”

Waving the metallic Ace of Hearts card in your face, his quick silver tongue catches your attention as it runs along his lips. In an attempt to look impressive and put an end to the questions, Eunseok nonchalantly admits, “I like the games I play.” 

Although you must maintain your image and stay in character, all you really want is for all of this to end. You can’t take this and him anymore, like the weeks of filming together have reached a breaking point. You want to scream, ‘Cut!’ to put an end to this suffering, but you can’t fail your dream or let your character down either.

It’s as though you’re developing feelings for someone who isn’t even real. As though you are losing all feeling of reality as you observe him from up close. And because you know what is coming up next, you’re damn sure that Eunseok will take a piece of you with him when the lights go out and the cameras stop rolling, and everything is said and done.

Trouble…

It’s in his perfectly lethal-hued dark eyes. In the way the lamp light hits his eyes that makes him look so enticing, like a glass of whiskey on a thirsty day of never being enough. Intoxicating. Mysterious. Dangerous. A glass of trouble, really, and you’re fastly becoming a growing alcoholic. 

The narrative he tells you hurts as his words continuously fall from his gorgeous lips and seep into your thoughts and emotions like melted wax.

“The truth is, you can’t get enough of me.” Eunseok’s same eye-level with you decreases as he straightens up from the desk and now gazes a little down at you, imposing a slight dominance. He lifts his gloves, causing some veins in his arms to bulge between where the gloves end and his white rolled dress shirt begins. 

Without consent, his gloved fingers begin to crawl upward the inside part of your naked arm, waking goosebumps on their way. The trace is slow and faint, but that is exactly what he wants—for you to disintegrate bit by bit.

“Admit it,” he prompts.

He’s being pretty sadistic and adamant by insisting that you know that he knows how you feel about him; which is precisely the situation, and it leaves you feeling so exposed.

And it’s as if his proximity, presence, and dominance have completely eroded you, your character ‘breaks character’ as it succumbs to his dark charms.

You two are so close that you can understand each other perfectly, even in whispers right now. So you fire back in a private voice, “If I cared more about the truth,” miserable and defeated, “I’d be too aware of who was using who.”

In response, all he does is smirk,

and after making his way to your shoulders, he subtly brushes his thumb along your collarbone. Heat is generated by the tiny friction, and much like a fire match is struck, it ignites sparks in the air.

His hand then moves to brush some hairs away from your face and tuck them behind your ear. The black leather of his glove begins to skim first, then caress your delicate skin and the left side of your face. 

His eyes pierce your soul like a knife, so you look from them to his lips, breaking eye-contact. They lust for touch and have a unique, attractive shape.

“Stop!” You voice out in shock at what he’s doing, but do nothing. His gloved fingertips continue to graze your face. 

“Wonderfull,” he comments silently.

Your brain is fried...

And while in a daze, you notice that his tie is a little loose around his collar.

For some reason, this makes you feel compelled to tighten it, sealing the last bit of separation between the two of you. Eunseok’s brows furrow in concern as he realizes that this isn’t at all included in the script. Although this is blatant improvisation, the performance must continue as long as the director doesn’t yell cut.

You can understand why his free hand, which lends on your waist, is gripping you so tightly and nervously. He kind of breaks his neck shyly smiling away from you before turning back to face you...

Again, something the scene steps don’t cover.

“It was out of pl—” 

‘ace,’ it’s what you attempt to offer as an explanation while the camera is rolling, but you don’t finish saying it... Your mouth stays agape in contrast.

You opened it with an intention, got distracted, and now you hold it open with a fresh thought.

...Him.

Your lip gloss is a mirror of his tiny diamond-studded vest’s sparkle, as are his eyes, which reflect your phoney diamond necklace. 

‘How’d you get so pretty?’ Your mind stutters and your body shudders, yet the line is plain to see as it’s painted on your lips—ready to perform, ready to be spoken. How do you allow yourself to say it, though? 

But for real, when did his lips become this pretty?

It’s challenging to discern which aspect of yourself feels and which acts. There is a messed-up intersection where your character throbs with the need to kiss his character, and you throb with the need to kiss him.

Can he feel it? Are you obvious? Does anyone in the room have the ability to see right through you, as though you’re a transparent bottle filled with all these bottled wicked wants and needs?

Under the necklace, the skin on your neck contracts, relaxes, and contracts once more.

Your lips begin to quiver as the cold leather finally slides beneath your chin. Lifting it, your eyes are drawn back to meet his. You’re painfully aware that it’ll only take a single kiss to weaken a million truths.

“Fuck,” he utters as he begins to brush your lips, causing the leather to become sticky from the shiny gloss. 

Taking back his hand, he starts to rub and then separate his thumb and index finger, examining the degree of stickiness between them. He sighs, “You’re making me want to suggest that we steal those stones together.”

“I’m not stealing any stones with y—”

“I know, I know,” he says, interrupting. “But almost…” 

Eunseok looks directly at you and presses his tacky gloved thumb to his lips.....

The flawless pair of strands that get in the way of his eyes symbolize his seriousness while his tongue begins to pick up and taste any bits of whatever is still on his lips…

The intimacy is revolting, but you aren’t even given a chance to die from all the obscenities he’s doing as he continues.

“You are,” his voice becomes quieter as he speaks, “almost making me want to do it.” 

His lips draw nearer. His breath is what you inhale.

“Almo—” 

As soon as his lips touch yours, the rest of the sentence disappears. Just as your glittery, dark eyeshadow is captured in perfect detail on camera, his splattered letters perfectly entangle in your mouth.

Unsurprisingly, he gives you a desperate kiss with hands that dig into your waist.

The greatest corruption imaginable is a kiss that says, “If you aren’t mine, then I’m making you mine!” A kiss that puts your life and breath in danger. A kiss that tears through the façade and the acting mask, growing ever more dangerously real. 

What’s worse is that having spent so much time with him, it’s so evident when he’s unable to pretend. And currently, he surely cannot! 

He cannot act as though his lips aren’t needy or that his skin isn’t becoming hotter. Or that when he pulls your body more into his and presses his tongue deeper inside your mouth, his body isn’t trembling just a little bit.

Your hands slip off his shoulders and latch onto this vest, tugging on it just a little bit, even hanging on to it desperately for the life he’s stealing from you. 

His heart is pounding beneath your hand, which is hard to comprehend considering that an actor with his level of training shouldn’t even flinch when filming a kissing scene. More so than anyone else, Eunseok exudes an air of magnetism despite being largely composed of steel. The fact that you’re seeing him partially fall apart for the first time is mind-boggling. 

It’s truly insane what only a kiss can reveal. And of anything, it isn’t fast. For this is something that you should feel, just as the audience should when it’s their turn. 

You whine his character’s name in between kisses, only slightly conscious that you’re still in the heat of filming this scene. However, he just hushes you, nuzzles your nose gently against his, and continues. His low, pretty pants and foul moans layer at your throat, just as yours in his.

Given how far out of script you two are at this point, you’re certain the director has had enough by now and will call it quits at any moment, but that never happens.

It’s gross how much of Eunseok’s tongue encircles yours while his cute nose wrinkles and brushes against yours. It all makes you want him even more. For the worst part, he smiles through it. It’s quite vile since he knows exactly what he’s doing.

You can feel his lips burn from the constant, wild collisions. And his scent seeps into your nostrils. That much is certain: it’ll be difficult to forget this—to forget him.

“Do you—Do you?” he stammers, pressing his lips to yours as he breathes heavily and squeezes your waist so forcefully that you fear his hands will split you in two. 

Since it’s an entirely improvised line, he eventually comes up with the right combination of words. “Have you indulged in this fantasy before? Have you—Have you ever thought about kissing me?” 

Even though Eunseok’s words are already weighing heavily on your heart and lips, he adds even more bitterness by saying, “You definitely have.” He answers his own question by not even giving you an opportunity to respond.

But then, is it untrue? 

Of course not, as you feel the weakness in your knees. You find it somewhat unfair that he has granted himself a space where he’s fusing reality and fiction.

You fight, “It’s—” while making an effort to escape and resist his lips, “It’s just this time,” but it’s mediocre at best.

As you step back away from him, his hands hopelessly slip off your waist and slide back to his side. They appear empty-looking, as though they don’t own anything of value, like something was snatched from their possession.

Now, empty handed, Eunseok is back gripping the metal of the desk. It isn’t like it’s just you who is feeling the effects of those frenzied kisses; he has definitely lost his breath too. His lips are pretty roused and ‘used-looking’, much like after an intense makeout, while the tips of his ears throb as they peek out from under his dark hair.

He somewhat manages to come up with another line even though his fairly strong defensive system is down.

“Then perhaps it’s just been my imagination all those times I thought I felt you thinking about me.”

Your mouth drops open at the same time as the director cries out,

“CUT! Beautiful! Beautiful!” He waves his hands in all directions proudly. “That take was spot-on perfect; we’re done here. I got everything I want here”, he says, tapping the big camera that some other guy is holding, and also exclaiming, “One take. It only took one take!” with excitement. “Excellent improvisation! Reshooting would only sour the spark.” He then successfully clasps his hands and says, “That’s a wrap, everyone!”

You’re left standing in front of Eunseok, glassy-eyed, quite sensitive, and shocked, but optimistic that what the two of you just did is still partially justified by your acting profession.

It looks like he’s blinking more than normal; and blinking is undoubtedly one of the patterns Eunseok exhibits when he’s nervous, which you’ve noticed throughout the months that you’ve been working with him. He also seems to be in denial, with confused lines painted on his temple.

Both him and you stay motionless while looking at each other as the director talks about the scene with a different staff member, his voice only sounding faint and far away in your ear.

“I like a good chase in a scene. To me, that’s everything. The actors must have a compelling chemistry and be aware of their roles. They must have trust in each other and their actions, because making a film is similar to a construction site, it must be built. It’s more than a camera, lights, and action.” Taking off his baseball cap, he gives himself a head stretch. “Trust me… what these two have is lethal.”

The longer the director keeps making observations, the more of the ‘real’ Eunseok is in your presence. Adorable, nervous smiles, head turns, and motions; knitted brows that enlarge his eyes even more. It’s as if he has softened his human side, opened his heart, and ‘thrown his metallic armour away.’

Finally, after hearing the comments, he sort of hisses with a ‘Really?’ while tilting his head to the side and putting on a cute, sarcastic look of suspicion.

“Are you okay?” You ask him in a gentle tone, concerned because it appears he’s thinking through and repeating every step of the scene.

He nods, but his face still wears that expression of shock mixed with denial, and a slight, but still noticeable, shy spark in the far back of his ever so silver persona. It seems like he’s coming to terms with everything that just happened, and he’s still quite riding out the wave.

Now that he has had a taste of how you kiss, it’s quite impeccable how you can bite down like an enemy and later be tender to all of those marks like a friend. 

You’re high-key giving him so much more to think about—so many more thoughts to deal with than what the sight of you in your dress had already done for him up to this point.

‘Romance’ slash ‘No Control’ slash ‘Trouble!’

So many twists and turns until the conclusion, but the scene is now over. 

The drama is done. The ‘acting’? 

Done! 

You’ll be taking off your makeup and dressing down, but the characters you just played will still exist within the both of you. That despite the fact that it seems like you two will be avoiding dealing with this for the time being, you’re both actors, and currently, the cost of your acting is your sanity. 

Starting today, heartthrob actor Eunseok won’t only continue to cause headaches to the millions of girlies who have his posters hung above their beds, but to you as well.

‘.....Nice.’

© 𝟭-𝟰𝟵. do not copy, translate, repost, and modify my works.

#riize #eunseok #song eunseok #riize scenarios #riize fanfic #riize imagines #riize x reader #riize fic #riize x y/n #riize fluff #riize suggestive #eunseok x reader #eunseok scenarios #eunseok imagines #eunseok fluff #eunseok fanfic #song eunseok fanfic #riize oneshots

[vasito-de-leche]

Hello!😄, I admire the way you write ✍️The way u never mischaracterized characters and the way you write them accurately is fascinating to read for ,and how you also took focus on small details about the character heck im starting to believe you work on the game R1999, if may I ask if you could write about Six from R1999 with a timid S/O or about a self-aware au of Six ? It had been my obsession of him after he came out and with his story making it more fascinating and made me attract towards him more

;R1999 6 - Self-Aware AU

Headcanons about how 6 would act upon becoming self-aware. Related to this Self-Aware AU post.

tysm for the kind words! I rlly like overthinking and overanalyzing stuff <3

I'll do the self-aware AU for this post to match the other one posted recently about 37, but feel free to send another ask if you'd still like 6 with a timid S/O!

There is a lot to be discussed about 6 and how all four characters of the 1.4 update contrast and complement each other so wonderfully, but I have a lot of trouble narrowing down what exactly I want to talk about here and what I should save for a proper analysis of the characters and the way I interpret them. So as usual, I ask that you guys bear with me with these trains of thoughts!

For starters, in my opinion, 6 is a very good narrative foil to 37.

Both focus on alienation and isolation from their respective communities, both are characters that struggle with the concept of fate, and both were born knowing their numbers--the key difference is the way each tackles this piece of information.

As discussed before in her own post, 37 does not question the reason why she's 37: like 210 says, "she stumbled upon fate at birth," and did not go through the same process of having to figure out one's number like the rest do. When it comes to 6, it's slightly different but the fundamentals are the same: he knows the number he will be assigned, and yet this revelation is not part of a natural process, it's something that us forced upon him and his family.

What I'm trying to say is that 37 and 6 weren't given the choice of discovering their soul numbers, and thus lack the most important part: the understanding of their own lives and selves. Compare this to 210, who became "too predictable" upon finding out his own soul number, or Sophia, who has clearly developed a very complex relationship with her own friends because of the inferiority and feelings of inadequacy she feels not knowing her own number.

And this is when the contrast between the two become clear: 37 is partially isolated from her community because she doesn't understand fate, nor the importance of one's journey, she doesn't respect the discovery of one's number. 6 is partially isolated from his community because no one else but him is able to see the concept of fate--or the Revelation--as a negative thing. His entire life, his entire bloodline is defined by fate and the Revelation, but only he understands the burden and the pain such knowledge entails.

Because only he has seen the way this Revelation takes over his loved ones, until they become strangers, mere vessels for infinite knowledge and bound to their role as perfect, eternal leaders. His character event shows the radical change in his aunt once she receives the Revelation and 6's fears of his entire self being rewritten once he receives it as well.

It's important to note that the moment Atticus becomes a proper 6 and receives the revelation happens on the very same day that everyone on the boat becomes a victim of the "Storm." Sophia's father and 37's mother were on that boat--but so was Alma, the current 6 at the time and Atticus' aunt. This event is crucial for all characters, as it cements their chosen paths: it's the study of the Emanation for 37, to continue her mother's research.

It's the day 6 will receive the Revelation and see if his efforts to prepare for it will amount to something.

And yet we know that 6 was able to withstand this Revelation without his entire self being washed away by the infinite amount of knowledge. We know this because we see him retain his hermit-like behaviour in the main story, avoiding people and preferring peace and quiet. We know this because, at the very end of this event, he says that the revelation is "just as simple as it is."

37 does not understand fate, but she doesn't fight it either because studying it won't change the fact that her soul number is 37. 6 understands and once feared fate, and he fought to resist it because his entire life, his memories, his personality and essence were at risk. I also really love that small detail about how 1.4 focuses on Plato's allegory of the cave, with 37 and 6 being put on this pedestal as those who witnessed the truth and came back to save the others--and yet, these two characters needed people OUTSIDE of the island to help them with their respective journeys (37 with Vertin, and 6 with Sophia). It just clicks so right to me!

In the context of a Self-Aware AU, I like to think that the self-awareness is something that comes with the Revelation. That every 6 before Atticus himself realized the truth of their world, similar to how 37 sees this self-awareness as yet another eternal truth. And because the number 6 is meant to represent harmony and perfection, they understand more than anyone that to ensure the peace in Apeiron, they cannot allow others to know the truth. Think of it as the whole deal with Pythagoras and irrational numbers--the discovery of irrational numbers ruined the whole system.

I think that a much younger 6 would've been distraught at this information, to know that Alma was the only person who was "real" and that he began to drift away from her because he couldn't recognize her anymore. But now, after receiving his Revelation and becoming the new leader, he might be more focused on appreciating life as it is. Why would he be bothered by knowing everything so far has been a script? He's already been haunted by fate his whole life, this is, in the end, the same thing. Of course, 6 is a philosopher in his own right, despite knowing pretty much everything there is to know, I think he would like to ponder about the more existential issues and topics that come with self-awareness.

I also like to think that his self-awareness and the Revelation come with knowing how the story will develop, at least in relation to Apeiron. He knows of Vertin's arrival, he knows of Arcana's schemes, he knows that by the end, Apeiron will be revealed to the human world. 6 believes it's impossible to change the course this game and its story, and the best thing he can do is help everyone prepare for it--I like to think that's why he specifically sent 37 to greet Vertin and the rest!

When it comes to finding out about the Player, I already said in 37's post that it would be very nice if she could see the player, but not hear them. And to contrast that, I wanted 6 to hear the player, but not see them.

The Player's existence is the one thing that 6 cannot pinpoint nor rationalize. He listens so very attentively when you speak, and he quickly realizes that you are not part of this infinite stream of knowledge from his ancestors, you're ... Just a person. What are you trying to teach him, if that is even your goal?

At first, I can see him struggle with this strange presence interrupting his very much needed alone time, choosing to remain silent until you go away, but he would grow to find it comforting, similar to his friendship with Sophia when they were children. You are an outsider, you're not part of this little world he lives in--you can offer a refreshing and different perspective. Once he's used to this new change, perhaps he will speak again, either to ponder out loud about your existence or monologue about whatever might be occupying his mind. Unlike 37, he wouldn't tell a single soul of your existence, largely because he believes it's something unique to him, entirely unaware that there's someone out there behind the screen rooting for him.

#reverse 1999 #reverse: 1999 #reverse 1999 x reader #reverse 1999 6 #6 #self aware au

[a-cosmic-elf]

For the fic writer asks:

56 and 37!

This is going to be a personal one, probably long winded again, so I’ll put it under a cut.

56. Are there any fics that you would change or rewrite if given the chance?

The current version of Absolution is a rewrite. I’ve changed minor things, like how Kat used to call Seb ‘Boss’ - after a while, I found I didn’t like it. I wanted them to be closer and less formal with each other.

I also re-added in the confirmation that Yin is trans. He always has been, but I was afraid I’d get hate for it, so initially, that part had been cut. I felt brave after enlisting the help of a sensitivity reader and reinstated it for the re-write.

I don’t believe you have to ban writers from writing the ‘other’. It’s like acting. A good actor should be able to play any part, regardless of their personal experiences. Who I am really shouldn’t come into it. And if we want more inclusive and diverse stories, demanding cishets stick to only writing cishet is not going to help that cause. Careful research and enlisting sensitivity readers is the way forward.

The original version of the fic is still up but archived locked. I only got to chapter 9 before I had a falling out with my previous beta, which coincided with falling ill with depression. I wanted to die, ended up in therapy, and so on. It took a lot to return to the story after that. It was like returning to the scene of the crime. ‘Oh, and here’s where I fell ill and wanted to kill myself’ like fuuuuuck.

2020 was tough on everyone. Like many, I was already struggling, so lockdown took all of it and held it under a microscope. The most important thing is that I sought help, I’m recovering, and I started writing again. I took that opportunity to rewrite the story from scratch. I like how it’s going so far, but…

37. What fic has been the hardest for you to write?

Again, Absolution. It still feels like an impossible hill to climb, made worse by association with my illness, and it is an OC fic in a fandom notoriously hostile to OC fics. A fandom I now dislike for being a toxic dumpster fire. And the other related canon ‘Absolution’ happened.

I found it very hard to return to the Abby again after that or even speak of it. It feels wrong. Part of me wants to go back and rewrite it again, removing the ‘absolution’ part so that I don’t cringe every time I like to talk about my fic. (Notice how I rarely mention it on my blog unless asked). I’m getting better at it, but I still find it jarring. But the name is so essential, woven into the very fabric of the story. It’s the name of the goddamn ship and the theme of the entire piece. It would be very hard for me to remove it at this point.

Bioware has upset me. The whole reason I started writing it was because their narrative has more plot holes than a seventies string shopping bag. I know it’s just a big coincidence, but I feel like they stole my subtitle on purpose, and now the only reason I want to finish it is out of pure spite because I believe I can write a better story than them with one eye shut, standing on my head, dancing the Macarena. I mean, look how I’ve been able to fix their story retrospectively without touching canon events at all. It’s easy. I don’t know why they didn’t do it themselves. Canon is just asking for fic writers to fix their shit when they’ve been so blatantly incompetent. 🙄

I didn’t find it hard to come up with the story. I’m just finding it hard to care about Mass Effect these days. Or the videogame industry as a whole in recent years. It feels like just one letdown after another. Games have never exactly been award-winning sci-fi, but it has felt increasingly like the story part of game development has meant less and less to developers over the years. They now sacrifice everything - story, most of all - just to get something out of the door. It’s depressing.

Sorry to end on such a bum note. It’s always going to be angsty talking about which fics were the hardest.

I am still committed to finishing Absolution. Spite alone is a powerful motivator, but your and other’s support makes the struggles worthwhile.

I’m sorry I haven’t got back onto AO3 this week. I prefer using it on the laptop, and I just haven’t had a chance to switch it on. I also wanted to pace myself, savouring all your lovely comments because I rarely have so much interest in my work.

I would have replied earlier this evening, but I had to lie down with a headache. Whew, it’s been a tough day. My head still hurts.

Thank you for the ask! I wanted to make sure that I at least reply here! Feel free to ask about the Abby any time. I am working on chapter 17. It’s just been a slow process because of, you know, everything above. It kind of kills the creative process. Talking about it with fellow readers and writers reignites that spark, so thank you from the bottom of my heart. 🙏🏼💕🥰

#writing asks #Fic writing asks #ask game #cosmic chats #cosmic writes #asks and answers #✨💕💕🙏🏼🥰 #once again I’ll send out some asks tomorrow if you’d like one #let me know #i’m just so tired and sore and need to sleep #love and hugs to you all #mutuals 💜 #tw depression #tw sui ideation #mental health recovery

[seyaryminamoto]

Here's a simple fanart that was my wallpaper for a while:

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/108665751

note: I just realized the ground of the industrial district is covered in metal as much the sky is covered in fumes, which is quite depressing tbh.

Also, can I ask something that was confusing me for a while: Why didn't Si disclose the questionable reliability of the WL tile with Ozai, especially with Azula being away for months after FLS arc? Besides, currently, he should be able to put two and two together and understand that such "evidence" can be manipulated and are not proof of the truth, such as Sokka's damaged knife. He was implied to be capable of doing the detective work to some capacity, which means he's not entirely brainless.

I understand his character was meant to give Ozai advantage, yet he barely does anything at all. I feel like even Kino was more useful.

So is there any reasoning behind such passiveness? I had thoughts but they're only assumptions

Beautiful art as always! Thank you so much! You really put so much heart into these pieces, it's amazing *-* and honestly, never mind those details haha, let's just say this is Seethus on vacation somewhere less nasty (?)

I'm going to guess that you're talking about the tile Azula dropped at the end of her nasty argument with Ozai a while ago? To be honest... Ozai always knew it wasn't likely to be the result of Azula or Sokka having killed the tile's owner. Considering the argument they had, it's kind of easy to assume she didn't actually do it. The tile in that instance was kind of a final middle finger at Ozai: "want to collect White Lotus tiles? Go on and do it, then, and you have just as much evidence that I killed the right person as you do with Seethus", was the message Azula conveyed, in a sense, haha.

Therefore, it's not that Seethus was stupid and didn't tell Ozai the likely truth: they both knew what was bound to have happened, or in this case, not happened. It didn't really boil down to Seethus telling Ozai not to believe in this tile as evidenec of anything, because Ozai's also not so dumb as to think Azula would have done exactly what she just raged at him about.

As for how useful Seethus is, haha, Kino is more useful in terms of the narrative so far, since he's a character who is evolving and does have a lot of parts to play in the story. Seethus is passive right now because he's basically Ozai's comfort assassin (?). In one of the latest arcs I wrote, Seethus outright steps over boundaries and starts acting on his own because Ozai is indecisive about his orders, and Seethus kind of tries to take certain matters into his own hands.

Something I think I must bring up again is that Seethus's role was always meant to be very secretive: he has been dealing with low-profile threats against Ozai ever since he took power. Zhao-Combustion Man would handle the more high-profile ones, through the Gladiator League, if possible. Ozai's primary problem with deploying Seethus is that he's always been in hot water in regards of his position of authority in society, and as much as Seethus is OP, Seethus isn't bound to be able to kill half of the Fire Nation's population if there were an uprising against Ozai, for instance. So, if important people (the Head Sage, Shaofeng, Zuko, Iroh, etc.) suddenly start disappearing magically, kind of the way Ursa did, with zero explanation? Things would get ugly for Ozai, politically-speaking. Seethus helps him in situations that are less public and less threatening for his image: he terrorized the city in The Fire Lord's Shadow arc, but the only person who ever knew it was ultimately Ozai's doing was Azula. While some soldiers did see him and even fought him, nobody made the connection back to Ozai because that's how Seethus operates: nobody knows he works directly for the Fire Lord, and he's supposed to keep it that way.

Hence, Seethus was 100% down for joining the navy secretly and ensuring to kill Sokka personally, back when Part 1 was just beginning. Why does it not happen? Because Ozai's paranoia is constantly flaring up, and he wants Seethus with him almost at every moment. It's quite ridiculous on his part, no kidding there, but the main reason why Seethus does or doesn't do something is always Ozai. And whenever Ozai is being dumb and daft, Seethus has to stick with obeying Ozai's bad decisions... or lightly rebelling against them for Ozai's benefit (or so he thinks), as he did in what I mentioned, the arc I was writing not long ago.

In any case, Seethus is going to play important roles in a couple of crucial situations that will be coming up in the future. Or, uh, more like one's in the future and one's in the past xD I'm not going to explain a lot, but he will be involved in Ursa's escape after shit hits the fan... so, at least you have that to look forward to, haha. Sorry if he's not doing enough yet... but Ozai's dumb paranoia keeps holding him back from doing his job.

#wingsfreedom #gladiator art here!! #that was a really soft one too #seethus you are not supposed to be cute you #oh well #what's one more multifaceted character am I right (?) #deadly sick poisonous assassin with the rotting firebending #and he's... cute #we love that for him we really do

[gold-pavilion]

In your opinion based on their dialogue, is there something romantic going on between Inui and Koko? I don't know if ppl shipping them is misplaced or not, if there is any merit to the romance rumors between them.

Fun question! My stance is always "people can ship whatever they like", canon or crackship or anything in between, without need to prove or explain a single thing, or justify it as a "good choice of ship". Shipping is a fandom activity for enjoyment, that's all it is. Let's ship and let ship, hell yeah.

That's where I start from. But let's get into InuKoko, absolutely!! It's a hella good subject.

In short and simple: yes! There has always been a strong romantic aspect to their story, overall. Things going on between the two characters that unquestionably involve romance. That much I can say, since it's factual in script, presentation and progression.

Romance is the basis of their plotline, after all. What I mean by this isn't how in love they are, in what form, whether it's a good or bad thing, much less where exactly they stand now and what's gonna happen to them - none of that. What I'm saying is that it is a storyline that happens because Koko had a romantic interest in Akane and then in Inui, kickstarting everything from their individual growth lines, to Koko's involvement with the Black Dragon gang (which wouldn't have happened had he not decided he'd follow after Inui exclusively), to their place in the overarching Tokyo Revengers plot and the struggle they're currently solving. Everything is where it is with these characters because Akane died, because Koko kissed Inui, because they stuck together all those years, because Koko wanted to follow Inui anywhere, because Inui did so much impulsive stuff for Koko as "the person he'd die for" too, because Inui didn't think Koko had gotten over Akane and kept himself closed to communication, because Koko decided to act like money and success were his life and left for Kanto Manji Gang, and now, because Koko is realizing he's been cowardly and that what he wants for himself IS Inui. All throughout, this has been built on the base of a romantic element.

(From there, one can discuss and voice opinions to their liking about whether Koko's way to approach Inui was misguided, healthy, toxic, awful, tender, messy, a good thing to do or a bad thing to do; and whether the bond that came from it is misguided, healthy, toxic, good, bad, etc etc. But it is a thing that's present there, has always been.)

As for the current stage of the story, chapter 252 and all that… I mean, I realize your question probably IS referring to this current time haha, I just find it important to clarify the type of story we're already coming from, with those two. But for what's right now, since you're welcoming my personal opinion on this… 

The language and narrative framing around "I will forget Akane, I'll give myself to Inui" is saying enough, I think, considering this is a man he made physical moves on and was emotionally very involved with. The words are pretty straightforward! It reads like a direct contrast between old feelings and new feelings, in which, ultimately, Koko's feelings for Inui (however people may judge them) are what he chooses to pursue. He's finally come to terms with that. And Inui, well, Inui has been waiting for him to come around for a while now.

That's the way it reads to me, dialogue and full context of the manga considered!

Again, though, regardless of where Inui and Koko end up and what's stated or left unstated about their relationship, we ship and let ship in this house. Thanks for the question, and feel free to chat more about it anytime!

#asks #inukoko #kokoinu #kokonoi hajime #inui seishu #tr 252 #tokyo revengers #tokyo rev #queerness in tokyo revengers #thoughts and talk and so #koko is the world's messiest bisexual that's for certain #but a bisexual he is #also sorry if this is formatted weird #posting from a new tablet and i'm an old man with technology

[loverhymeswith]

Between the Lines | Stephen Holder x F!Reader | Chapter Two

Masterlist

Summary: A Stephen Holder AU. We’ve all seen those true crime shows, where infamous cases are re-enacted for the entertainment of audiences at home. What if The Killing really was just a television show, but the detectives and cases were real?

Warnings: The Killing spoilers, language, smoking, mention of addiction, reader has a nickname

Word Count: 2,998 words

A/N: This fic has truly been a collaborative process with the massively talented Vee @a-reader-and-a-writer ! Thank you so much for sharing this journey with me and helping out with so much of the plot and dialogue. This is just as much your story as it is mine.

Thank you to the wonderful @sociiallydiisoriiented for beta-reading! Your advice has been invaluable <3

You're late onto set for the third day in a row, but thankfully no one notices. Time-keeping has never been one of your strong points. There's a commotion happening behind the monitors which seems to be taking up everyone's time and attention, and that suits you just fine. It's not like you have to clock in and out of this job, but you'd hate for anyone to catch you slacking. Good PA jobs are hard to come by and god knows you need the money.

Your tardiness means you haven’t had time to grab yourself a coffee yet, so you know it's going to be a tough day ahead. The script rewrites have been keeping you up until the early hours of the morning, but you can’t stop now.

Ever since you slipped into Stephen’s trailer with the lines you’d secretly altered for his school yard scene, you can tell that he's been more relaxed during filming. You can hardly blame him for being upset; the producers are attempting to twist his character into someone unrecognisable. The least you can do is try to discreetly moderate some of their biggest changes. A simple dialogue adjustment here and there can make all the difference. And, after all, you’re in the perfect position to do so. Prior to filming, your role entailed months of research into these cases, and you’ve interviewed the friends and family of everyone involved. In your own way, you feel like you know the real Stephen Holder better than anyone else on set - barring Sarah Linden, of course.

"What's going on?" you ask one of your fellow production assistants as you try to slip into the small crowd unnoticed. Two of the high-level producers are here, plus one of the network's bigwigs, and they're currently locked in a heated exchange with the director.

"Detective Holder stormed off set," she whispers. "He didn't like the change they made with the Richmond evidence."

Your stomach churns. "They’re running with that?" 

You'd been privy to a potential change in narrative that would see Stephen being made responsible for the fake photo of Councilman Richmond at the end of season one. You've been hoping the producers wouldn't take this route. It’s going to be near-impossible for you to mitigate such a modification to the plot, especially knowing what a huge knock on effect it will have for Stephen's character later in the show.

Your colleague nods, but before you can probe further, the network executive turns from his conversation with the director and addresses the gathered crew. "For the love of god, will someone please go talk to him? Time is money, people. Remind him he signed the goddamn contract. He doesn’t show up and say his lines, he doesn't get paid."

You look around. Sarah Linden is the best person for the job, but she's nowhere to be seen; her next scene isn't scheduled until this afternoon. Besides, from what you’ve heard through the grapevine, she isn't exactly over the moon about the changes to her own character, either. 

No one else seems inclined to volunteer.

Ever since childhood, you’ve been cursed with the unfortunate affliction of your heart leading you to act before your head can fully engage. Today seems to be no exception because, in a voice far more confident than you truly feel, you call out over the sound of the murmuring crew. "I'll go."

Your offer is met with no argument, so, conscious of the collective gaze focused between your shoulders, you head over to the back of the lot, telling yourself that you can do this. 

He's just a normal guy. A real guy. He's not one of those pompous, precious actors. 

Rapping your knuckles softly against the cool metal of the trailer door, you call out to the occupant. "Um, excuse me, Detective... Mr. Holder?"

A beat of silence is quickly followed by a gruff response from inside. "Yo, just leave me the fuck alone!"

A valid response in your opinion, but you continue nonetheless. "Listen, they want me to convince you to go along with the script. But they can’t hear us back here. So, I'm fine just hanging around for a few minutes and then telling them I did my best."

Another few seconds pass by. You can picture him carefully considering your words, no doubt listening out for any sign of a lie. But you were speaking the truth. You have no intention of persuading him to follow the script.

"Why would ya do that?" The disbelief is evident in his deep voice. "Don’tcha want me agreein’ to this shit?"

With your heart and mouth once again functioning independently of your brain, you lean against the trailer and call back. "Hell no! You're right, that new script is utter shit and I wouldn't agree to it, either."

Movement stirs from within the trailer and the door flies open. Stephen's face is full of suspicion and mistrust, but when his eyes land on you, they seem to soften.

"It's you."

You give him a tentative smile, suddenly feeling very out of place. Until recently, your paths have barely crossed, an unusual achievement, considering how much you know about the man in front of you.

"A'ight.” He takes a step back. “You can come in." 

You weren't actually expecting him to let you inside; you really had been content to simply hang around for a little while in order to keep up the pretence of talking to him. But now, with no choice other than to enter, you climb the small metal steps and join him in the trailer. 

He's standing close, practically towering over you in the cramped space, and it occurs to you that he’s even taller than you thought. His soft hazel eyes scrutinise you, but they're full of curiosity now rather than distrust.

"Hi," you smile awkwardly again, offering him both your hand and your name. "I'm one of the PAs."

Taking your hand in his much larger grip, he shakes it gently, humouring you. "Yeah, I know who you are."

Of course. He’d helped you with the coffee spill, and you’d wiped off some of that ridiculous makeup from around his eyes - makeup that had made him look more like the walking dead than a sleep-deprived cop. But that was a few weeks ago and honestly, you're surprised that he remembers.

“And it’s Stephen,” he adds, almost as an afterthought. “Ain’t a detective no more.”

“Right.”

Stephen gestures for you to take a seat on the small sofa, while he opts to lean against the counter opposite. His arms are folded across his chest, where a sea of grey fabric swamps his slim frame. You know from your research that this is how he used to dress, but his appearance today makes it easy to forget that the man before you was once a successful homicide detective.

Fixing you with an intense gaze that causes your stomach to flutter, he asks, "I gotta know, why’d ya wanna help me?"

Your answer, you imagine, is not what he’s expecting. "Because I spent the last six months researching everything about you and these cases. I know about your background and all the struggles you've been through. I know that you always tried to do the right thing, even when the odds were stacked against you. I know that you'd do anything for your family and that they love you very much. And I know that this man," you point to a copy of the script lying on the sofa beside you, "is not the real Stephen Holder. They're making you out to be something you're not just for the ratings, and it's not right. It’s not fair. The world should get to see who you really are, and I'm trying to fix what they've done, but-"

"Woah, hold up a moment." He cuts you off, raising his hand. "What d'ya mean you're fixin' what they‘ve done? Whatcha been doin'..?" He pauses for a moment, until understanding dawns on his face. "Yo! You're the one makin’ these last minute changes to my lines?"

Flustered, you shake your head. It wasn’t your intention to reveal quite so much, but you've always had a tendency to ramble when you're nervous. "That's not-"

Stephen is pushing off the counter, stalking towards you. There's a glint in his eye that wasn't there a moment ago.

"Don't tell anyone," you plead, realising that denial is now futile. "I could lose my job." 

It certainly isn’t within your remit to tamper with the script; you just so happen to be one of the few PAs with access to the file. Your duties are confined to printing and distributing the updated copies, along with more menial tasks like coffee-runs, but when you saw what the producers were doing to Stephen's character, you figured a few tweaks wouldn't go amiss. 

"I ain't gonna tell anyone," he assures you, a sliver of a grin slowly spreading across his handsome face. "Fuck. I'm impressed. The producers really don't know?"

"They're more interested in the bigger picture, so I can get away with a few dialogue changes here and there to lessen the impact. Plus, there are so many writers, it's easy to lose track of who wrote which line." You bite your lip, realising you’ve just as good as admitted your crime to an ex-cop.

"And you really researched me?"

"Only for the show," you hasten to add, worried that he's going to think you're some kind of stalker - even if you did already have a vested interest in the project. You clearly remember Stephen’s cases from your time as a media student, living in the city. You followed them closely, each one as gripping as it was horrifying. 

Stephen sinks down onto the sofa beside you. He's quiet and contemplative, but before long his legs begin bobbing anxiously and his smile fades.  "So you know this latest change with the photo… that ain't how it all went down. Yeah, someone framed Richmond and everythin' went to shit. But it wasn't me. I had nothin' to do with any of that."

"I know," you assure him. "But that's not something I can change, unfortunately. It's too big a plot point. Which is why I totally understand if you want to drop out."

He slumps back in his seat, looking miserable. A muscle in his jaw ticks, and he scrubs a hand across his mouth. "Can't do that. Trust me, if it was just ‘bout me, I woulda walked out weeks ago."

You shoot him a questioning look.

"My sister and nephew. This money’s gonna change their lives. I ain't exactly strugglin', but I can't give 'em everythin' they need…everythin' they deserve. I took so much from 'em over the years." His expression darkens. "I just wanna give somethin' back."

Without thinking, you put your hand on his arm. "I'm sure they would understand. I interviewed Liz as part of the project."

He looks up suddenly, eyes widening as they focus on you. "Yo, you spoke to Liz?"

"She was singing your praises. I said she should bring Davie up to the set sometime. I can show them around, if you like."

Stephen shakes his head, looking impressed and slightly bewildered. "They really got you doin' all sorts round here, huh?"

You shrug and realise that you're still touching him. Quickly removing your hand from his arm, you place it in your lap instead. "Keeps me out of trouble."

He grins mischievously, gesturing towards the script. "I ain't so sure 'bout that." 

You swallow a nervous gulp. "You really won't tell anyone?"

"Hell no, you’re doin' me a huge favour," he tells you earnestly. "I won't say a word. Not even to Linden. And I can help with the lines. How’s that sound?"

You smile, feeling heat creep under your skin. "That would be… perfect."  Having Stephen's direct input into your illicit edits will only increase the authenticity. Not to mention the added bonus of getting to spend time with the intriguing former detective.  You'd be lying if you said you hadn't been admiring him from afar during your time on set. And now, coupled with everything you already know about him, it turns out that he is a genuinely nice guy. It certainly doesn't hurt that he's easy on the eyes, either.

"A'ight. Then it's settled." He nudges you playfully with his elbow. "It’ll be our li'l secret."

While Stephen's mood seems to have brightened infinitely since you arrived at the trailer, there is still one question to be addressed. There’s no point beating around the bush, so you clear your throat and ask, “what should I tell the producers?"

He grimaces. "Tell 'em I'll do it, but let’s make 'em sweat it out first. You wanna soda?"

Without waiting for your answer, he leaps to his feet. As he hands you a can of Dr Pepper from the well-stocked mini-fridge, you don't miss the way his eyes subtly trail over you, landing on the printed graphic covering the front of your faded grey t-shirt. 

His face lights up. "Yo, Jimi Hendrix! Usually I got no fuckin' clue who the guys on your shirts are, but this one I know. D’ya know he was born and raised in Seattle?”

"Of course," you laugh, surprised by his sudden burst of excitement. "My dad took me to see his statue being unveiled back in '97. We lived just around the corner."

“You're from Seattle, too?” His jaw drops. "No fuckin' way."

"Born and raised," you grin.

“Oh snap!”

And just like that, you find yourself sliding into an easy conversation with Stephen. For the next hour the two of you talk a lot about your lives, marvelling over your shared experience of growing up in the Emerald City and wondering whether your paths might have ever crossed.

It's only when there's a knock on the trailer door almost ninety minutes after you first entered that you remember the entire crew has been waiting for your return. You can’t bring yourself to feel bad though.

Saying a harried goodbye to Stephen, you promise to find him later to discuss his lines. As you walk back across the set, you can't help but smile, a glow of happiness filling your chest when you think about working together. 

You make a point of arriving onto set early the next morning. You didn't get a chance to speak to Stephen again after relaying his agreement to the producers; the director insisted on making up for lost time, so it was full steam ahead for the remainder of the day. But in between fetching coffee and cleaning up after the props department, you managed to sneak a few glimpses of Stephen’s scenes. 

Perhaps it was just your imagination, but a weight seemed to have been lifted from his shoulders. The spark that appeared in his eyes while the two of you talked in his trailer was also still evident, despite the best efforts of the makeup department. 

Now, with the morning's first coffee order balancing in your grasp, you make your way across the lot, careful to look out for sound engineers. Before you reach the director’s chair, someone calls your name.

"I'll take those,” the first AD tells you, hurrying over and relieving you of the drinks. “You're needed elsewhere today.”

“What?” You blink in surprise, suddenly fearing that you’ve been found out. “Where?”

She starts to reply, but you don’t hear what she's saying because another much louder voice is shouting from across the set.

"Yo, Hendrix!"

Glancing over your shoulder, you're greeted by the sight of Stephen jogging over to meet you. As usual, he's dressed in the uniform grey hoodie, and judging by the dark circles below his eyes, the makeup artist has already had her way with him. Faintly, you wonder what he looks like when he isn't being forced to play a caricature of himself. All the photos you’ve seen of him are at least two years old.

The AD addresses Stephen with a forced smile. "Oh good, you're here. I'll let you explain."

"What's going on?" You shoot him a perplexed look as the AD wanders off, coffees now in hand.

But Stephen isn't listening. His attention has fallen to the logo on your t-shirt. "Alice In Chains?" His nose scrunches up. "Never heard of 'em."

"Really?” You fight the urge to roll your eyes. “They're from Seattle too, you know."

He shrugs. "Guess you're just gonna have to teach me ‘bout the musical history of our city. Was never into that shit growin' up. Good thing we're gonna be spendin' more time together, huh?"

Your pulse quickens. "What do you mean?"

The mischievous spark you caught a glimmer of yesterday has returned. "Might’a had a little talk with the producers last night. They wanted me to be more dramatic, I gave 'em more dramatic. Went full on diva with 'em. Demanded a shit ton of stuff I knew they'd never give me, just so I could get 'em to agree to give me my own PA." He winks.

Slowly, your brain begins to connect the dots. "Me?" 

"Who else?" He slings an arm over your shoulder. "’s’better than runnin' ‘round after those idiots all day, ain't it? Told 'em I wouldn't take all your time. You can still do whatever it is you do with the scripts."

When he sees the uncertainty in your expression, his face falls slightly and he removes his arm. “You don’t have to, though. Just figured-”

“No.” You cut him off abruptly, recovering from both the surprise and the flattering offer. “I want to.”

“A’ight.” You swear you see a flicker of relief cross his face, but it’s gone in the blink of an eye. “C’mon then, let’s go find Linden.” 

Catching sight of his former partner emerging from her trailer, he hollers across the set at the top of his voice, “Yo, Linden!”

Joel Taglist: @a-reader-and-a-writer  @babblydrabbly @skvatnavle @sociiallydiisoriiented @yespolkadotkitty @mayhem24-7forever @s-u-t @phoenixhalliwell @weallhaveadestiny @lavenderluna10 @katjnordstrom96 @kirsteng42 @edwardbaldwin @fairchildflag @immyownlittlebitch @heresathreebee @bewitchedignition

Story Taglist: @madkovacs

#stephen holder #joel kinnaman #the killing #stephen holder x you #stephen holder x reader #stephen holder imagine #the killing fanfic #stephen holder fanfic #between the lines

[eerieplease]

Je me souviens pendant que je vis (I remember while I live) — this is how Agnès Varda haunts us at the end of her beautiful recollection of what if feels like to exist within a period in time, Les Plages d’Agnès. I find it mysterious why we always seem to associate the idea of memory with watery forms of existence. There is something about bodies of water that suggest an echoy haze, which is exactly how memories appear to me. Wong Kar-Wai said it better: He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.

I feel like my songs are embedded with the idea of teenage wonder. My heart becomes something special when I think of those years of sensorial exploration, and I constantly find my way back to a pub that I used to go to that no longer exists. I see the shadowy green light, the dark walls and the checkerboard floor with a blur very specific to the filter of recollection. There was a jukebox in the space where my friends and I used to dance. I discovered something about love then. To this day, I keep making songs that I would like to hear on that jukebox. That’s probably why I love synthesizers — they channel my nostalgia through me.

I need a strange kind of peace to be able to remember. When I feel uneasy, I often resort to the whimsical tunes of Mort Garson’s Plantasia (warm earth music for plants… and the people who love them), which used one of the first Moog synthesizers ever to craft songs that would supposedly help houseplants grow. This album was released at a time when a book called The Secret Life of Plants brought a special kind of attention to plants and how we perceive them. Perhaps the elements of memory in plants are superficially treated, but at least there they are in black and white! Yet no one calls his friends or neighbors, no one shouts in a drunken voice over the telephone: Have you heard the news? Plants can feel! They can feel pain! They cry out! Plants remember everything!

To support this affectionate thought, the book details a mildly weird experiment that aimed to prove that plants can remember. A plant was exposed to two men: one who treated it with care, while the other showed nothing but cruelty toward it. After a certain period of time, instruments electrocoded to the plant showed that chaotic impulses arose when the cruel man got near to it. I don’t know anything about the scientific validity of this experiment, but its findings certainly have poetic value: it only takes an existence to remember.

I’ve been delving into a particular exploration of modular synths for a song that I am currently producing, Allegory of Touch. With my songs, I feel like I am always trying to touch something thas has faded. Poignant fragments amidst a non-linear mental narrative made up of moments that are too close to touch. I know that I am done when I press play and my heart quietly acknowledges: here, this is the sound of nostalgia. It hits me like confusion but with the lingering feeling of being home, surrounded by an eerie afterglow that suggests that something does not feel quite right. It is exactly how I felt after watching Aftersun this Wednesday. What I would like to say, I guess, is that remembering can be an act of survival in moments when you feel like reality will never feel like a memory. Days are too much of a mirror, and there is little to do other than look back and exclaim, with astonishing warmth: I think this is what happened to me.

#agnes varda #wong kar wai #plantasia #mort garson #moog #synthesizer #dream pop #journal #bedroom pop #musician #queer #aftersun #paul mescal #songwriting

[spacemonkeysalsa]

Raidne I love you

I caved and downloaded a bunch of mods, basically because I have this D&D character I want to RP, but my current campaign is still on-going so it's going to have to wait. So, in the meantime, I will RP her in BG3.

Here is my modded-to-the-hells tav. Name: Raidne

Class: Artificer / Guild Artisan

Age: 30

Race: Cambion I swear my intentions are pure, I am not one of those D&D players trying to break the game.

Backstory: Typical half-fiend sob story, her mother was a Gondian and her father is an Incubus named Harleep who she met exactly once when he took her from Toril to go serve in the hells like a good little cambion.

Below the cut is where I dumped my notes, in case I take a break from this game and have to come back to it later and try to remember what the deal was. Generally, the base game narrative doesn't break immersion much, even with the mods, and when that does happen, I'm rewriting those scenes to make it make sense for my RP madness, because it's a game and I can do what I want:

Raidne grew up in about as supportive a mortal household as you can expect, meaning they didn't immediately cast her into the hells or just leave her in the wilderness to die, but raised her in a cautious household. Big family, a mixture of gnomes and humans, and then this one cambion. Like most cambions raised in Toril, she was naturally disposed to mischief growing up, and disciplined pretty harshly as a result. She was also largely ostracized by her peers, and had nobody apart from her incredibly stubborn family, who did love her, but also were kind of out to prove that she wasn't destined to become a evil bastard just because she was a half-fiend bastard, and her relationship with them was always strained because of the pressure they put on her to basically be perfect in order to make up for their own prejudices. She did like to get into trouble, especially when she was young, and she was not blind to the fact that she always received harsher punishments than anyone else for similar offences. Eventually, around the same time that Harleep did whatever it was that got him into enough trouble to become the personal Incubus to a cambion, her existence was discovered in the hells and she was inducted into service at Harleep's suggestion. When it came time for him to perform a very secret favor to an archdevil who is not within the hierarchy he's current under, the fact that he had a secret half-fiend Artificer daughter to offer up, was pretty convenient for him. To keep her people safe, Raidne went quietly and, similar to Karlach began service in the hells against her will, and more like Dammon, was employed not as a soldier, but as an Artificer. Her seven years in the hells was mostly monotonous and lonely, rather than tortuous and harrowing. She did good work, kept to herself, and made zero attempts to escape until she saw the nautiloid, at which point, she made the admittedly impulsive decision to make a run for it. And she absolutely did not think this through, and if she had, might never have escaped hell at the risk of being infected with a mind flayer parasite.

It was bad in hell, and she's glad she's not there any longer, but her prospects in Toril aren't great either. She doesn't want to return to her family, as she believes they are better off mourning her than knowing her again. Some part of her is actually grateful for the infection and this unexpected quest to find a cure, because it gives her something to do while in the back of her mind, she tries to figure out where she should go from here. Where can she go? She's legitimately never thought about it before, even to dream. She's always just taken it for granted that she has no real home.

She doesn't belong anywhere, and that's not going to change just because she saves the swordcoast.

Her state of mind at the beginning of Act One is a mixed-bag. She's excited and elation at (really for the first time in her life) being free to do as she likes, and honestly finds everyone she meets to be utterly delightful. She has a lot of internalised hatred for herself as a cambion, and is especially mistrustful of other cambions, so just the fact that she's in the company of people who she deems as automatically less evil and more trustworthy means she has a somewhat warped view of all her companions as these sweet innocent people who are all at least initially totally worthy of her unconditional trust. She's also not at all feeling all her feelings right now though, somewhat on purpose. If she didn't have something to do, she'd probably be sinking into despair, and when things get very quiet, that's exactly what happens. In order of recruitment - Lae'zel: Her first impression of Lae'zel is that this is the coolest person she's ever met. And she's so nice. She's always saying exactly what she means and she's never trying to trick you (which is what Raidne considers nice) unlike a lot of soldiers, Lae'zel just relies on her pure might, and she's so strong, and dramatic and smart. Raidne is baffled when other people describe Lae'zel as unlikable, or harsh, or rude. She views Lae'zel as honest and objectively correct most of the time. Genuinely wants to go straight to the creche, but gets very distracted by the tiefling refugees for reasons discussed below.

Shadowheart: Immediately picks up on the vibe of her being a worshipper of some dark god and then just as immediately forgets about it, because nothing could possibly matter less to Raidne than the gods. Shadowheart is only marginally less cool than Lae'zel, by virtue of not liking Lae'zel. She would describe Shadowheart as "sweet" and "sensitive" and is genuinely shocked when Shadowheart starts to elaborate on her extensive knowledge of psychological torture. Rather than these new revelations changing her view of Shadowheart, she actually just comes to respect her more as someone who is shrewd, knowledgeable and dangerous, while still being capable of deep empathy. Astarion: Meeting Astarion is really uncomfortable for Raidne because she finds him relatable in all the sad ways. And the fact that he's on his guard and assumes that they are mind flayer thralls causes her to realizes that this is actually a really rational thought to have and she should have had it herself before she just up and joined with the first people she met. It causes her to reflect on the fact that she might be a little too eager to form a crew, and maybe her isolation for the past seven years (read, her whole life, actually) has made her ill-equipped to judge people. She spirals a bit as a direct result of this first encounter and doesn't really start to know Astarion as a person for a couple of days, which is also why she doesn't pick up on the fact that he's the platonic ideal of a vampire and not at all subtle about any of it. Also, she absolutely noticed he had no reflection, but didn't think about it much, because she's very used to people just sometimes not having a reflection, due to hell lore. She feels incredibly stupid when Astarion tries to bite her and she finally, FINALLY figures it out. She's actually not even a little bit mad at that point, because she's too preoccupied being disappointed in herself to really feel any actual betrayal.

Gale: Gale is the first person she meets who makes a cure seem like a truly viable outcome, and she takes a lot of strength from his confidence and expertise. Unfortunately, this first impression of him is a high point in their Act One relationship. She quickly starts to distrust him and his judgement because a) she picks up on the fact that he implicitly trusts her, which she thinks he should not do because she in no way knows what she's doing, and is a half-fiend, who trusts a half-fiend? and b) she can tell he's hiding something, and guesses that it's big enough to threaten the people around him. She's torn between wanting him to come clean about it, and also not wanting to know, in case it's bad enough that they "can't be friends anymore."

Karlach: Raidne has a weird relationship with tieflings, almost infantilizing. She recognizes that there's a lot of similarities not just visually, but in how the stigma of cambion bad behaviour has affected them, though they are much closer to mortals than a half-fiend like herself. She experiences a similar uncomfortable moment of self-reflection when she meets Karlach, but because she just went through this with Astarion, she's a little quicker to shrug it off and see Karlach, and then she immediately bonds with her, much, much more quickly than with any of the other companions. She's very protective of her, and determined to see her succeed, and she does actually have just enough self-awareness to realize that she might be vicariously working through some stuff when it comes to her new bff Karlach. She also feels some type of way about the fact that she can't personally help Karlach with her engine, and makes getting Dammon's help priority number one.

Wyll: Because she's so protective of Karlach, Raidne's impression of Wyll is pretty bad, but she takes a moment, and takes a deep breath and sees how Karlach understands him, so she makes an effort to understand him too, and really means it when she tells Karlach that he's the best of them. His transformation almost serves as a second first impression for her, as she completely forgets her initial anger and disgust and instead embraces him as a devil, much more like herself now, and wishes he see himself the way she does. She's also completely blown away by the idea of this young person going off on his own, being left to his own devices and making the choice to be his own person and live up to his own ideals, even with a Mizora shaped anchor making it difficult for him. She finds him genuinely inspiring and decides as a direct result of their conversations, that no matter what, she'll never serve the hells or anyone working for that system again.

This will be challenged later.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 tav #baldur's gate 3 tav #cambion tav #cambion oc

[thequietmanno1]

Thelreads, Vigilantes 86, Replies

1) “Been quite some time but I remember the gist of it: Pop in a coma, Koichi as a sniper and Soga being useless. Yep, that`s where we were, so, let`s jump in and see what`s going to happen next, on Chapter 86: Masked Fighting Tournament.

…

Huh… This title does not bode well for this chapter, does it?”- Well, It’s bad for the present arc’s pacing, but honestly, this and the final few storylines of Vigilantes stuck out more in my head than the in-between stuff we had from the beginning chapters up until Bee Pop, so I honestly think this is some of the more enjoyable stuff Vigilantes has, unclear timelines be dammed.

2) “Yeah, phelps is trying to tell those dudes to fuck off, but they refuse to leave.”- Pretty much the same as it’s been since chapter 1 then?

“Now you`re telling me that he donated for this hospital in case something like this happened? Or am I jumping the gun and that`s not what we`re doing?”- It’s possible it was part of his plan for Capturing Tamao and simultaneously giving her the medical aid she needed, donating to several hospitals in order to have a support network available to receive her immediately no matter where he confronted her within the city. That, or they’d also double as a fallback option for himself if he got badly hurt whilst out on the job.

3) “Oh, now you know exactly who`s to blame, right? If he had donated more money they could`ve built a secure checkpoint rather than relying on three criminals harassing everyone that shows up.”- Sadly, access to his amassed bank account details were one of the few things Knuckles didn’t succeed in passing along to Koichi via Soga as an intermediary.

4) “…

I don`t know why but something is not sitting well with me. Why do I have the feeling we`re about to know some info that will greatly annoy me? I already know for a fact it must be about Knuckles, but I shiver at thinking what else he is gonna bullshit us about.”- How about teasing us off this current plotline for an entire flashback arc about his investigation into the proto-trigger drugs? 5) “Although we haven`t seen much of him acting as a hero, not before AfO gave him a affectionate headpat, so this might be interesting… The manga about Vigilantes is gonna talk about heroes again.”- Technically, we see him acting as a hero here, but in such a manner that it’s clearly leading into his eventual bread-and-butter tactics and persona as a vigilante, effectively meaning that we get both hero and Vigilante in operation at once. 6) “…

Wait what

What- What?

Where just gonna jump into a flashback, just like that?”- All flashback, all chapter, all the way. 7) “Ohhhh…. Not vigilantes, I see, it`s a illegal fighting ring by the looks of it.”- Not quite a vigilante yet, anyway, but certainly already taking steps to becoming one… 8) “Illegal stuff, I like it, finally we`re going in the dark side of society, with no black or white morality attached to it, just a bunch of people wanting to have fun beating the everloving fuck out of each other.”- Knowing that, was  it really so surprising seeing Rappa’s entrance into the narrative? 9) “Also, where does Knuckles fit into this? Because the way we`re going this flashback might end before we even get to the fun part”- Honestly, Rappa’s entrance into the chapter already made it a highlight for me. Koichi could have really done with a punch-loving guy like him to sharpen his edge against in a fight once Knuckles went awol on him. 10) “Hold on, he needs a sip before he can scream and writhe in agony.”- He’s chugging beer to regain Health – he’s secretly a Yakuza character! “Ohhhh- I now know where Midoriya`s father went, I wasn`t expecting this tie-back to the main series.”- Not the only one you’ll be seeing in this ring…. 11) “ooooookay what even the fuck

What you mean by stream? Wasn`t this place supposed to be a secret illegal ring? Why are you announcing it online?”- Illegal, yes, but I get the impression it was A) small-time stuff they were expecting to fall under the radar for a while to rake in some profit, and B) utterly disposable to the actual organisers, who can take the funds and flee should any police efforts be made to shut the club down, allowing them to start up again under a new name in another location. 12) “ALSO HOW LONG IS THIS FLASHBACK GONNA BE? I THINK WE`RE ALMOST HALFWAY THROUGH THE CHAPTER ALREADY, IS IT GOING TO BE ALL OF IT?”- All of it and more, it’s a whole new arc, completely disconnected from Koichi’s current predicament!... mostly. 13) “So much for an underground secret club, this shit is a convention center open for rent what the hell

the heroes were really lax back then by the looks of it, what the fuck”- I do get the sense that there is a noticeable disconnect in police and hero efficiency between both the main series and vigilantes, but I’m also generally willing to give it the benefit of the doubt here and there, since I find the overall story an enjoyable read. 14) “Oh shit, we`re going back to trigger by the looks of it

so it has some involvement of AfO, even if not directly.”-Technically, if the timeline (even if slightly wonky) is correct, then this would be Knuckles’ first real encounter with the drug, and thus, the trigger-point for everything that happened connected to it since, leading up to the current building climatic confrontation between Knuckle’s protégée and his evil Knockoff. 15) “Ha.Ha.

The whole hero name was just a long-plan to make this fucking pun, wasn`t it?”- I honestly would not have put it past Furuhashi. 16) “Huh, is that a proto-design of your future vigilante costume? It seems like it, and the timeline spirals in on itself like we`re in the end of Uzumaki

Or was it at the beginning of it? Can`t tell for sure…”-The seeds of the Janitor are definitely in there, but he doesn’t quite yet have the fight-happy joy his future persona will…in fact, his current opponent seems to have more of Knuckles’ bloodlust than Knuckles himself doe, even if it’s beginning to show a little towards the end there. 17) “Another pro hero in a undercover mission of course, their backup is waiting on the other side of the parking lot, and both sides are unaware of each other.”- Definitely not a pro hero, though arguably the most good-natured of the Hassaki, which, given he’s facing what will eventually become Knuckles, seems oddly karmically balanced out. 18) “A hug? Maybe? We can talk this over if he is not cool with it.”- Rappa’s a simple guy, with a simple wish. Punching. Short, simple, easy to wrap your head around. 19) “WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE

IS THAT

IS THAT FUCKING RAPPA

THE FUCKING OVERHAUL UNDERLING WHO FOUGHT AGAINST FAT GUM AND KIRISHIMA

ALL THE WAY BACK LIKE CHAPTER 140 SOMETHING”- I find it funny/awesome that Rappa, an otherwise-unremarkable mook in the grand scheme of MHA’s story, proved to have enough enjoyable presence and personality out of all of the Hassaki to earn a cameo appearance in Vigilantes, over even Overhaul or the other higher-ranked members – and even got toleave a lasting impression on Knuckles, going by the chapter ending. 20) “IT IS HIM

IT IS FUCKING HIM

WHAT THE FUCK

WHAT

THE FUCK”- Hilariously, this means that rather than get rappa a custom-made mask like the other members had, he was already wearing one 24/7 that was close enough in appearance that they just sewed a bird beak on it and called it good.

21) “THEY ARE CHIT-CHATTING, I THINK THE CHAPTER IS GONNA END BEFORE THEY ACTUALLY FIGHT”- It’s the trash-talk necessary to hype up the crowd before the bell rings, but honestly, I think Rappa’s philosophical views here wound up having more of an impact on Knuckles than he was expecting. 22) “OH MY GOD THEY ARE REALLY CHATTING

YOU TWO GET ON WITH THIS BULLSHIT BEFORE THE CHAPTER ENDS”- A good fight is like a good meal, you can’t rush it, lots of preparation has to go into the dish before you start cooking. 23) “WE SAW ONLY TWO PANELS OF IT, IT BETTER FUCKING NOT BE OTHERWISE I`LL BE PISSED.

KNUCKLES, GET BACK THERE AND GET YOUR ASS BEATEN PROPERLY”- Oh don’t worry, Knuckles likes the taster he’s got of what Rappa’s cooking up…. 24) “OH YOU FUCKING- THE FLASHBACK IS GONNA LAST ANOTHER CHAPTER

DAMN YOU FURUHASHI

DAMN YOU

AND JUST WHEN WE GOT RAPPA BACK”- On the plus side, it means we get more Rappa next time! @thelreads

#bnha vigilantes #bnha #thelreads #chapter replies #my hero academia #vigilantes 86

[ittybittytatertot]

I know I’ve made jokes about it being queerbait before but in all seriousness, whether sk8 is queerbait or not is entirely the wrong question.

This is for several reasons of course: for one, the term “queerbait” has lost significant meaning in the recent political/media landscape. For another, in anime there’s the question of is it queerbait or fujoshi-bait, which I’d argue are different things.

But the biggest reason it’s the wrong question is because the debate inherently ignores the already extant queer text of the show. Queer text that is increasingly disturbing as you realize it almost entirely rotates around the villain, Adam.

Violent, corrupt, flamboyant, sadistic, predatory, with the explicit, textual object of his affection being a 17 year old, Adam is every lavender menace stereotype wrapped into one even before you add in the childhood abuse and religious trauma.

And while there is a plethora of subtextual evidence that Renga (Reki and Langa) and MatchaBlossom (Kojiro and Kaoru) are romantically attached (especially after episode 10), the two characters other than Adam who come the closest to being explicitly, textually queer are Langa and Kaoru—the current and former objects of Adam’s predations.

So the conversation should not be “is this queerbait?”. That argument is a dead end. The conversation must instead be: what is this show saying about queer people (mlm in particular)? What does it mean when the villain—a pedophile, a corrupt politician, a serial abuser—is the most undeniably, textually explicit gay character while the protagonists’ potential queer romances remain just subtextual enough to have plausible deniability?

But then again, that’s exactly why the queerbait question comes up. Because if one can emphatically prove the heroes like each other in the gay way, then the villain can retroactively be just another gay character, and he doesn’t have to say or mean anything about queer people. Which means queer viewers like myself do not have to struggle with the disquieting notion that a story we like doesn’t like us back.

This is not a condemnation of the show. Sk8’s strong animation, background art, character designs, narrative structure, acting, and soundtrack combine for a marvelous piece of work. And I believe, whatever may happen with the protagonists, there is merit to both subtextual and textual queer stories.

But in liking this show, I’m also forced to confront the fact that the villain can be gay sooner than the heroes. The villain can be gay louder than the heroes. Simply put, it’s still easier to make the villain gay than the hero.

#sk8 the infinity #long post #queer things

[stillness-in-green]

Why Deku's ultimatum to Overhaul is bad and he should feel bad

This is a bit outside my normal character wheelhouse, but I really need to get a rant about it off my chest, so here goes:

The Deku and Overhaul scene in Chapter 316 is terrible. It is fucking terrible.

I took a whirl around Overhaul's tag up through when the leaks first started dropping, but didn't immediately see anyone talking about why it's so fucking terrible, only concerns about letting Overhaul see Eri (understandable, but baseless, I think), some empathy towards Overhaul's current state (totally warranted!), some snark about Deku being So Done with Overhaul (haha because who cares about Deku's stated goal of trying to understand villains, right?), and, worst of all, some cooing about how Deku was being so compassionate and noble by offering Overhaul that olive branch.

Deku was not being compassionate and noble there. Deku was being arrogant, small-minded, and so shockingly cruel that it leaves me speechless that anyone could think his stunted and hard-hearted "offer" reflects well on him.

Deku's entire motivation in this arc has been wrestling with the realization that he might have been able to avoid some of the desperate battles of his past if he'd understood more about the villains he fought. He thought of three very specific people--Stain, Muscular, and Overhaul--as he reflected, "Maybe it wouldn't have had to go that way if I'd understood them better." He then thought of Gentle Criminal and La Brava, people who he’d come to some understanding of, who he’d been able to soften the conclusion of his battle with by going along with Gentle's fiction downplaying what had happened between them. The whole line of thought was intended to contextualize his newfound desire to save Shigaraki.

It soon became apparent that Stain, Muscular and Overhaul were, in fact, encounters that he would be revisiting, as a chance to see how he'd grown since he faced them, and as a dry-run on reaching out to villains that would give him a chance to practice ways he might reach out to Shigaraki when the time comes.

Well, based on his performance so far, the idea that Deku might be able to reach Shigaraki is laughable.

Firstly, his tentative questions to Muscular were ill-timed, all wrong for the middle of a battle. Muscular laughed him off, and I don’t think there’s any version of that scenario in which he would have done otherwise. Muscular was a huge threat, gleefully violent, disinterested in conversation about his history. Obviously, right in the middle of a fight was no kind of time to try to figure out what made the man tick! But Deku didn’t get the luxury of choosing the circumstances of that encounter, so yes, that battle probably was unavoidable, certainly if Deku wanted to stop him from doing further damage. But the idea that because Deku couldn't reach him right then and there, it's impossible for Deku--or, indeed, for anyone--to reach him at all is fallacious. Not every person has to be able to like or understand every other person. If Deku couldn't reach Muscular, so what? That doesn't mean it's impossible that someone might. And that means an obligation to treat Muscular like a human being, to afford him human rights, to not stop trying to find a way to rehabilitate him, even as you safeguard other people against him.

Deku's battle with Muscular being unavoidable was not some great triumph, for all that the narrative used it as an opportunity to let him show off how far he’d come in mastering One For All. In the way that matters, the way that Deku himself is currently trying to better, he hasn't advanced at all. Imasuji Goto represented his first test in the lead-up to saving Shigaraki, and Deku failed it.

His next trial was Overhaul.* Here, again, was someone who Deku was explicitly trying to understand. So what was the one thing that was most key to understanding Overhaul's current motivation? What was the one thing that Overhaul was ranting about out loud, incessantly? And what did Deku conspicuously fail to ask about? Overhaul's relationship with Pops.

This was so easy. So obvious. And Deku didn’t even try. All he could think about in the moment he was faced with that broken man was the little girl that man hurt--all thoughts of trying to understand where the man himself was coming from went right out the window, flown away in an instant. Instead of asking about why Overhaul feels the way he does, he demanded that Overhaul feel the way Deku wanted. He was essentially holding the only person Overhaul cared about hostage for the remorse he wanted Overhaul to feel.

I'm not going to try to armchair diagnose Overhaul with mental conditions. I don't have the educational background, and I'm positive Horikoshi doesn't. But it seems pretty clear that asking Overhaul to feel guilt about Eri was asking for something that he might not be capable of feeling, at least not without years of therapy that he was plainly not getting in Tartarus. And if Overhaul is not capable of feeling that guilt, then what does denying Overhaul his meeting actually solve? Who does it help? It doesn’t help Eri. Doesn’t help the old man. It certainly doesn’t help Overhaul himself. The only person who gets any satisfaction out of demanding remorse from Overhaul is Deku. And even Deku didn’t look like he found it very satisfying!

Another failure. A meaninglessly cruel, petty failure. A failure that served only to hurt a man who was already a live wire of agony, to sentence an old man to a coma he might never wake from without Overhaul's expertise, and to deprive Eri of the only actual family she had left.

And look, Pops might very well not be the ideal guardian for Eri, and I'm not saying he should get to "keep" her just because of the blood connection, but it's not like he cheerfully handed her over to Overhaul and walked out the door! He turned to Overhaul because he trusted Overhaul, because he wanted someone to help Eri and thought that maybe Overhaul could. And when Overhaul's thoughts about Eri took a very dark turn, Pops first denied his request about using her to further his research and then, when Overhaul kept pushing it, chose Eri over the kid he personally took in from the streets by telling Overhaul that he needed to leave the Shie Hassaikai if he couldn't muster any more respect for human life than that.

But, you know, Eri is so cute with Aizawa and stuff. And Pops was a criminal. Probably. Maybe? I mean, he was yakuza, anyway, so he obviously must have been a criminal even if the police never actually arrested him. Apparently, this means it's okay to just leave him in a coma forever! Even though Overhaul absolutely has enough medical expertise that letting him talk to a neurologist about what he did to Pops might enable them to figure out how to wake Pops up even without Overhaul being able to use his quirk to undo the damage. Hell, Overhaul is also the person alive who has the best handle on how Eri's quirk works. He might even know what her accumulation condition is. Maybe a better thing to ransom his access to Pops with would be Overhaul telling Aizawa everything he knows about Eri's quirk so Aizawa can use the knowledge to help her get a better handle on it.

But no. Obviously undoing some small part of the concrete harm Overhaul did was less important than how Deku felt about that harm.

And there's more! Oh, is there ever. I called Deku arrogant before; let me circle back to that.

Deku said that if Chisaki would feel the way Deku wanted him to feel, then Deku would uphold the promise to let Overhaul see Pops. But where in hell did Deku get off making that claim? Deku is a student. He's not a pro. He has no authority, medical, legal, carceral or otherwise. He has no say in where Overhaul goes or who he's allowed to see.

What the fuck? What the actual fuck? What kind of strings did Deku think he could pull that he could just casually make that claim without so much as going into a huddle with Hawks and Endeavor about it first? How inflated has this kid's sense of importance gotten that he made Overhaul that promise without even stopping to think about whether it was something he was in any position to ensure? It was such a bullshit ultimatum, not only because of how needlessly obstructive it was, but because it was so formless.

"If only you would feel a wish to apologize to Eri…" Okay, so what if Overhaul goes back to prison and, three days later, calls out to say, "Okay, I thought about it and I really feel like I want to apologize, now can I see Pops already?" Who gets to make that judgment call? Deku? Is he going to drop his faux-vigilante act and come visit Overhaul in prison just so he can squint at the man really hard to see if he's lying? Is Deku going to delegate the call to someone else? All Might? Hawks? A prison warden? A psychologist? Who? Who gets to be the one to say, "Okay, I think his remorse is genuine."

Then, once that call has been made, how many people have to arrange for Overhaul to be escorted out of prison and to whatever hospital Pops is in? Will Deku get to oversee that visit? Does he think he can overturn a warden declaring, "The scum doesn't deserve a visit, and the old man probably doesn't either," or a doctor protesting, "I'm not letting that man anywhere near my patient!"

The hell of it is, I think Deku could do all of that. He's got a close personal connection to All Might, who was basically a demi-god to this society for decades; he has the ear of the current top three heroes. Everyone is apparently convinced that the power to save this society rests solely in Deku's hands; I'm sure he could ask for anything he wanted. But the fact that that is the case suggests that this society is not even slightly turning away from its dependence on heroes dictating its morality. A hero having the sole right to dictate, out of hand, based on his personal feelings, the fate of people designated "villains" while the rest of society turns away is exactly what Shigaraki is angry about.

The only thing worse than Deku perpetuating the worst problems of hero society in an arc that's supposed to be about him finding a better way is that he didn’t even stop to think about it. It never even occurred to him that that was what he was doing. He thought that what he was asking of Chisaki was just and fair, and thus, he didn’t need to ask for any second opinions or permissions; he didn’t need to think about what would actually be feasible, about what was best for the people involved. He'd made his judgment call about a villain, and that's all there was to it. The villain could fall in line or--nothing. There isn't actually another choice. Hero's way or nothing

I hate it. I hate it. I don't care about whether Overhaul "deserves" to suffer; heroes making the cold decision that they will make him suffer is antithetical to everything a carceral system intended to rehabilitate prisoners stands for. And yes, Japan does at least claim on paper that the goal of incarceration in state hands is rehabilitation.

Restorative justice is superior to retributive justice. It's better for society and it's better for individuals. It is kinder, it is more compassionate. Retributive justice poisons people. It perpetuates suffering for no reason but moral grandstanding. Individuals are allowed to forgive or not forgive anyone they want, but a society should conduct itself with an eye to the long-term welfare of all of its people. That means that even the worst kinds of criminals still have human rights. It means not inflicting pain that serves no purpose.

I've gotten off-track here. Yes, I think that if Overhaul could feel regret about Eri, that would obviously be a positive development for his character. It'd hurt like hell, but it would be a hurt that indicated he was becoming a better person, a person who wanted to do more good, less ill, with his life and efforts. But you can't mandate that someone become a better person. No ultimatum handed down from on high is going to change Overhaul's heart. Telling someone, "I'll help you, but only if you only feel the way I want you to feel. Otherwise, you can just stay there and suffer," is not reaching out to help people who are suffering in the dark, which is, again, what Deku claimed he wanted to do, what he begged for Nagant's help in doing, the way he insisted to the vestiges that OFA should be used.

Deku writing people off because they don't conform to his expectations, because they can't be "good" the way he wants them to be, nor even "bad" in ways he can understand, is him failing to live up to his own expressed ideals. "I wish you'd feel bad about hurting people," wasn't enough to reach Muscular or Overhaul, and it damn well shouldn't be enough to reach Shigaraki.

Cruelty does not beget kindness. You cannot treat people with only callousness and severity, then condemn them for not taking the opportunity to grow. You have to give them opportunities to better themselves. For Overhaul, giving him an opportunity would be letting him help the man he wronged and then moving forward from there. Telling him to feel regret about Eri or else? That's doing nothing but sweeping his pain back under the rug.

---

*I have more or less exhausted my outrage over Lady Nagant in chats with friends, so I'll spare the rant on how disjointed, contradictory and ludicrous her turn was; the gist is "very, on all counts."

---

P.S. Anyone who says that Overhaul "has nothing left to live for" is being a level of ableist that defies description. Prosthetics exist. Assistive devices exist. Speech-to-text software exists. Overhaul is intelligent, driven and highly educated. Even if he never got prosthetics at all, there would still be things he could contribute to the world if he were motivated to do so. The better thing to do, though, would be to get the man some damn prosthetics, hook him up with the neurologist consulting on Pops' case, and let the two of them get on with the matter of waking up the old man.

P.P.S. Overhaul spent six months in solitary confinement. The United Nations considers solitary confinement exceeding 15 days to be a form of torture. Solitary confinement creates severe mental health issues and exacerbates existing ones. It frequently leads to a deadening of empathy, something Overhaul has in little enough amounts as it is. It is absurd to ask a man who's just come out of these conditions to "feel sorry for what you did to Eri," especially if you're planning to turn around and send him right back to solitary. Tartarus is inhuman, and the only reason more of the escapees aren't total wrecks like Overhaul is because Horikoshi clearly didn't bother to do the reading on the wide array of problems that those characters should be experiencing physically, mentally and socially.

#bnha #bnha critical #deku critical #bnha overhaul #chisaki kai #bnha muscular #my writing? #stillness has salt #bnha spoilers #one last salty post before I go back to working on things for characters and plots I actually like in this series #taking my life into my hands and posting this in the tags #but seriously #please please let Horikoshi realize #that Deku saying he wants to use OFA to save villains and then doing nothing but using OFA to beat them down again #is not Deku WINNING #it is Deku LOSING #saving someone takes more than rescuing them from a bullet that wasn't going to hit them anyway #if you don't have follow-through then you're just condemning people to fall through the cracks

[jojotichakorn]

speaking of jealousy and wai i do wonder what exactly that part of the trailer where he pushes pat back and asks if he’s looking for pran is about. you could guess it’s just wai not wanting pran to be talked to by one of the engineering guys but at this point they’ve made a truce and it would make sense for the two leaders of the group to be in contact? so i’m wondering where exactly this reaction from wai is coming from like is he protecting pran bc pat did something wrong maybe idk.

also pat and wai were about fight each other at the rugby games in the trailer and my current prediction for that is they’re either fighting specifically over pran OR (which i think is more likely) pat’s being a bitch to him bc his jealousy stars so he’s giving snide remakes to wai and then they try to figure bc of them riling each other up so it’s still bc of pran they’re fighting but only bc pat is being an ass to him out of jealousy maybe. like the engineering and architecture guys are calling a truce but i have a feeling pat is going to start to feel a whole new dislike specifically for wai soon

ok, so in general i think that we are actually far from having made a truce because at present pat had to literally lie and use the engineers' dislike of architecture students to convince them to help them. and considering the preview for the next episode, we can see that there is still a lot of tension. and to be honest, i don't know when a truce will happen, but i assume somewhere around the time when pat and pran's friends either figure out or are told how close they are. considering the fact that they are both "leaders" of the groups, their relationship should work like glue. but so far, i am working under the assumption that they are reluctant allies at best.

in that case, in terms of the first moment, here it is:

it's presented in the context of "why are you sneaking around?" and i always supposed that it was just pran's friends finally figuring out that pran and pat are close, while they are still pretending not to be. they are supposed to be hiding around, but with time they will definitely become more obvious, especially to their friends, and i feel like this is just built up frustration from that and a final sort of "ok, what the fuck is going on here?", which is what i think will lead to pat and pran telling at least pran's friend group about them (in what context it will be at that point - whether platonic or romantic - we shall see).

as for the second moment (apologies for the messy screenshots jfkgjfdlkjgjdf), here it is:

and from it, i definitely get the vibes of pat suddenly attacking wai. because (as it might not be very clear from the screenshots), if you rewatch this moment in the trailer itself (it's at 2:40), you will see that pat rushes towards wai, and i personally feel like wai just sort of pushes him away rather than it being a two-way conflict. this, i feel, is also supported by the fact that not only is no one dragging wai away from pat, but pat's friends are also actually dragging him away from wai, which considering everything that we know about pat's friend group, he must be acting incredibly unreasonably at this moment if they find it necessary to stop him. all of this makes me think that this is because of pat's (unfounded) jealousy towards wai.

i don't think they will ever be fighting over pran, for two reasons:

first of all, it would not make sense for wai to have a crush on pran just because the series simply has no time to end this kind of an arc in a satisfying way and it could serve no purpose to the story because the only character who could benefit from such a storyline would be wai, and - no offense - but he is very much a background character, and they don't have the time nor the incentive to explore his character in depth.

second of all, the space that wai takes up in the narrative is very similar to pa's at this point, except wai is to pran what pa is to pat, and he is perhaps not as knowledgeable and not as intentional in his role. however, considering the fact that they continue using him as a sort of push for pran to think about him and pat (he is the one who asks about the secret crush, he is the one who convinces pran to go to the rooftop, he is the one who narrates the whole romeo and juliet thing), it's very clear that his narrative role is to be someone who offers one of the main characters some much-needed perspective.

#i will die on this hill #bad buddy #archer responds #anon #archer's meta

[flightfoot]

If anyone wants to read a fanfic focusing on Alya’s problems and feelings, centered around her as a person, I HIGHLY recommend “can you keep a secret?” by euphorickiri. 

It starts off looking like it’s mostly just gonna be interested in shipping Alyadrien (which it DOES do very effectively), with early chapters having a good portion of the plot be driven by Alya suspecting that Adrien’s Chat Noir and wanting to spend more time with him, find out more about him in order to become sure of it.

But even then, even as early as chapter 1, you get to see that there’s more going in with Alya than you’d normally see in such a fic. That she can’t get herself to post to the Ladyblog after the Lady Wifi business, that people at school are treating her differently after being akumatized, along with going over her current issues with her friends and family, things that are shown and develop more and more as the series goes on.

In chapter 1:

Nino was her closest friend besides Marinette. They bonded quickly over their mutual love for comic books and have only grown closer since then. Often when Alya felt like she couldn’t talk to Marinette, Nino was always there to lend an ear. This was happening a lot more recently than she wanted to admit. She didn’t know exactly what was going on, but Alya wasn’t stupid. Marinette was hiding something from her. Something big. She showed up to school half-asleep most of the time and when asked to hang out she came up with every excuse in the book to avoid going. There were even certain times she would just disappear without telling anyone. It seemed like it was taking a huge toll on her and Alya didn’t want to add to that burden. So she plastered a smile on her face for her best friend and supported her in any way she could. Still, she couldn’t help but be suspicious about what was going on.

She hated how much Lady Wifi took over her life. She pretended not to see the dirty looks people sent her, ignoring how hurt she felt. Nino was right. They weren’t themselves when they were akumatized. But that didn’t mean everyone sympathized with akuma victims. And she was no exception. Even Chloe was wary around her now. Chloe . The most fearsome person at school. So Alya preferred not to talk about it at all. It was just something else she had to deal with.

She wasn’t weak. She wasn’t . She could handle herself.

And with chapter two, it starts laying the foundation of her family situation.

“What do you guys want?” Alya asked tiredly.

“Breakfast,” Ella replied. “Can you make chocolate chip pancakes again?”

Alya ran a hand over her face and looked over at her alarm clock, relieved she had a decent amount of time to get herself and her sisters ready for school. Her parents worked during the day so it became Alya’s responsibility to look after the twins. Make sure they get to school, pick them up from school, feed them, dress them - everything. It could be draining, and as much as she loved her sisters, they were still kids who acted out and refused to cooperate at the worst times. But if she didn’t look after them, no one else would. Her parents, especially her mom, were too engrossed in their work. The one time Nora did come home to visit, Ella and Etta didn't know who she was. That’s how long she’s been gone.

So, this was Alya’s burden to carry. Alone.

“You guys have to eat something other than pancakes every morning,” Alya scolded, reaching for her phone. “I’ll make oatmeal with some fruit instead.”

As the story goes on, Alya’s family situation with her parents fighting and using her as a go-between while pretending everything’s alright, with herself being her younger sisters’ rock, becomes a bigger part of the story and necessary background to the emotional struggle Alya goes through, informing a lot of her character and why her thought process is the way it is.

The rest of the day consisted of Alya trying to get Marinette to speak with occasional assistance from Nino and Adrien. Nothing worked. The only person able to get a reaction out of her was Juleka. The other teen waved passing their table during lunchtime and Marinette waved back. And as worried as she was, Alya couldn’t help but be a little annoyed. There have been days where all Alya wanted to do was yell at anyone who dared to approach her. But she never took it out on Marinette or anyone else. But here they were, the situations revered, and Marinette wouldn’t even look at her . What made Juleka the exception?

No one wants you.

Alya pushed her tray of food away, her appetite gone.

She almost pulled her hair out when Miss Bustier told everyone to sit with their partners during their last class of the day and Marinette bolted out of her seat. Alya tried to hide her irritation when she saw Marinette and Juleka talking out of the corner of her eye as if everything was normal.

“Remember your projects are due tomorrow! I’m giving you the entire class period today to finish up,” Miss Bustier announced. “I’m very excited to see your presentations!”

Adrien slid into Marinette’s empty seat. “We need to find a couple more pictures for the poster but other than that we’re good.”

“I agree.” Alya glared when Marinette laughed at something Juleka said, not paying attention to his words. “We should do that.”

Oh? So quick to replace me? She tensed up as her own words mocked her.

Marinette rested her head on Juleka’s shoulder. Don’t worry, you’ll always be my number 1 partner. You’re irreplaceable.

Wrong. You’re disposable .

Alya’s feelings and emotions are validated by the narrative, even though she has the wrong idea about Marinette replacing her. 

Lady Wifi plays a big role in the story as well, since she’s not actually gone, and serves as a kind of embodiment of Alya’s negative emotions and worst impulses, as well as a looming threat. The tension between her and Alya helps accentuate the emotional heart of the story.

Alya also gets to disagree and talk things out with Ladybug and Master Fu, when she doesn’t agree on their handling of situations, though with them not being demonized in the process either. 

Just... if you want to read a fic focused around Alya’s problems and emotions, but that treats everyone else well too, that gives her a lot of agency and also a lot of support, I HIGHLY recommend this fic.

#ml fanfic rec #alya cesaire #adrien agreste #alyadrien #can you keep a secret?

[missmentelle]

How do I know if I'm being gaslit? What does that mean?

If you are experiencing “gaslighting”, it means that someone is intentionally trying to make you feel like you are irrational and insane. They will try to convince you that you can’t trust your own judgement, even about things that you experienced firsthand. The internet tends to use the term ‘gaslighting’ to describe any kind of lying or arguing, but it’s a lot more complicated than that - when you are being gaslit, it means someone is going out of their way to make you feel like you’re the crazy one who causes all the conflict in the relationship when in reality, it’s the other way around. A person who lies about liking your new haircut or starts an argument with you about whose turn it is to do the dishes is probably not gaslighting you - gaslighting is intentional, repeated, and specifically aimed at undermining your sanity and emotional stability. It is a pattern of abuse, and by definition, it can be very difficult to recognize and escape from. 

Examples of gaslighting include things like:

Insisting that things did not happen the way you remember them, even if you have proof. Maybe you and the abuser had an argument over WhatsApp yesterday, and they called you a slur. You definitely remember that this happened, because it was devastating for you, and you took screenshots in case they deleted the message. But when you confront the other person about what they said, they flat-out deny that it ever happened - in fact, they have no idea where this is coming from, and they feel insulted that you would accuse them of such a horrible thing. They didn’t do that. They’ve never done that. In fact, there was no argument. You made the whole thing up in your head. It doesn’t matter that you have screenshots - they don’t want to see them, because they know that you are totally misunderstanding what’s in them, just like you always do. When you’re being gaslit, the gaslighter doesn’t care about reality. They will flat-out deny what happened and create a new version of events that puts them in a better light, and they’ll insist that you are the one with the faulty memory for not remembering it that way. Even with evidence right in front of their faces, they’ll stick to their guns and say that you are completely inventing things. 

Constantly insisting that you overreact and blow things out of proportion. Maybe you saw a notification on your partner’s phone the other day, and you realize that they’ve been texting other people on a dating app. You are obviously very upset about the situation, and you aren’t sure if you even want to stay in the relationship. But instead of apologizing, your partner begins to get angry with you for how upset you are - they insist that you are blowing this completely out of proportion, that you’re being a huge drama queen, that you’re being manipulative and attention-seeking, and that it’s completely insane for you to be upset. Any time you are upset with the other person for genuinely hurting or harming you in some way, they flip everything around - all of a sudden, the conversation becomes focused on how unstable and dramatic you are, and the abuser’s wrongdoing is totally forgotten. The abuser paints a consistent picture of you as someone who freaks out over absolutely nothing and completely overreacts. 

Playing up your existing mental illness or insisting that you are mentally ill. Your abuser sees signs of mental illness in everything you do. If you have a history of mental illness, they’ll insist that it’s coming back - if you don’t have a history of mental illness, they’ll invent a new mental illness for you out of whole cloth. Did you get upset because your partner screamed at you? That’s not normal, you’re having huge mood swings and you’re definitely bipolar. Did you stick up for yourself when your partner was trying to control you? That’s definitely not normal, you’re acting just like this person they knew who had severe BPD. Whenever you are upset about the way you’re being treated or just refusing to be controlled, your abuser will play the mental illness card - suddenly, they are the hard-worn, loving caretaker and you are the very sick person who refuses to let them help you. Sometimes, when you are getting especially angry about your partner’s mistreatment, they may flip a switch and go from yelling at you to acting like your caretaker in an instant - they’ll start pleading with you to get help, offering to drive you to the hospital, and begging you to understand that you aren’t well and that they’re just so worried about you. The point, of course, is to completely undermine you as a person; they want you to believe that you are seriously mentally ill and incapable of understanding what’s real and what isn’t. 

Positioning themselves as the innocent “victim” in the relationship, even when they are the one mistreating you. To an outside observer, you are the one constantly being terrorized by someone who criticizes and controls you. But your gaslighter doesn’t want you to see it that way - according to them, they are the innocent victim who has to tiptoe around your constant unpredictable mood swings. They’ll claim that they try so hard to help you and avoid setting you off, but you’re just so unreasonable - they may even claim that you are the one abusing them. Any time you fight back, stand up for yourself or have a negative reaction to their abuse, they will find a way to frame things so that your response is the real issue, and not the abuse that provoked it. If they pinned you against a wall and you pushed them off you to get away, they will flip the narrative on you - they’ll swear up and down that they were just gently trying to keep you from hurting yourself when you violently attacked them. Somehow, every confrontation you have about your partner’s bad behaviour turns into you apologizing and feeling bad, even when you went into the conversation being pretty sure that you did nothing wrong. 

Intentionally turning friends and loved ones against you. A gaslighter will sometimes try to recruit your friends and family to “their” side, turning them against you. They will tell your loved ones all about your supposed mood swings, “mental health issues” and how difficult you are being, in an effort to win sympathy and destroy your credibility. The idea is that when you turn to your friends to say “my partner freaked out on me over something small last night”, they’ll respond with “mmmm, your partner already told us this story and they gave a very different version of what happened. It sounds like you’re leaving a lot out to make yourself sound better. Your partner says you’ve been acting weird lately, what’s going on with you?” It’s much easier to warp someone’s perception of reality if you can convince their friends and family to reinforce the fake reality that you’ve created. 

Dramatically misrepresenting your motives. A gaslighter will find ways to “prove” that you’re the kind of person they say you are, regardless of what you do. Even if you do something nice for them, they can find ways to twist things to suit their narrative. Did you buy them an expensive birthday present because you care about them? You’re clearly being manipulative and trying to bribe them somehow. Did you clean the whole house for them because you wanted them to be able to enjoy coming home to a clean living space? Nonsense, this was clearly you being passive-aggressive and trying to shame them for not being as clean as you. Your actions end up not mattering - no matter how hard you to try to prove that you aren’t the difficult, terrible person that your gaslighter says you are, they will always find ways to misrepresent your motives and lie about your intentions so they can turn your innocent behaviour into whatever they want it to be. 

Being gaslighted is an immensely stressful experience - it’s designed to make you feel crazy, and if you’re subjected to it for a long time, that’s exactly what will happen. It’s unbelievably stressful to be in a position where you feel like you cannot trust your own mind or make rational decisions. And when that stress inevitably starts to affect your mental health, that becomes further evidence that your abuser is correct and that you’re the crazy one. It can be extraordinarily difficult for a victim of long-term gaslighting to escape from their situation, because they genuinely start to believe that they are the problem in the relationship and that they’re lucky anyone will put up with them. 

If you suspect you are being gaslit, there are some things you can do to recognize the issue and break free from it:

Keep meticulous records. Write down the details of conversations and arguments as soon as they happen. Record fights with the audio recorder on your phone. Take and save screenshots of important conversations. Save voicemails. Keep a diary with dates and times of events. Nobody has perfect recall, but if your partner’s version of events consistently doesn’t match your hard evidence in a major way, that’s a pretty good sign that they are twisting the truth to suit their needs.

Talk to a neutral third party. Talk to someone outside the relationship that your partner doesn’t have access to - this could be a friend, a coworker, a neighbour, anyone that you feel you can trust. Turn to an internet group or forum if you have to. Show them the evidence you’ve collected or talk to them about what’s happening, and get a neutral perspective. People who have not been exposed to your gaslighter’s charms will be able to tell you pretty quickly that your situation is not normal. 

Think about your past relationships. Have any of your past relationships followed the same patterns as your current one? Has anyone in your past made similar complaints about you? If your last relationship didn’t have these kinds of issues, there’s a good chance that the new person in your life is the problem - not you.

Trust your gut. If you get the sense that something isn’t quite right, don’t ignore those feelings. Remember, you don’t actually have to be certain that you’re being gaslighted to justify leaving the relationship - if your relationship frequently causes you stress and anxiety or makes you feel like you can’t be yourself, something is seriously wrong and it may be time to go.

It’s also a good idea to talk to a mental health professional or a domestic abuse expert if you suspect you are being gaslighted - they are experts at helping your recognize it and come up with strategies to have healthier relationships in the future.

Hope this answers your question!

MM

#Anonymous

[felikatze]

give me the a brainworms i am deeply invested in this man

(0) (2) (3) (4)

okay first of all you asked for this. second of all if i am a little off track from the game that is explained by me just building thoughts like building blocks without looking back. third i was supposed to be studying for an exam but this counts as practice right? it's character analysis anyway lmao.

buckle the fuck up, my dearest anon, because I have sub headings.

1. A as the Player Character

Let me begin with why I am obsessed with this horrid little guy in the first place: he's a silent protagonist. I am always obsessed with protagonists. It's a law of nature. I love taking hollow characters and dissecting them for scraps. It's a long standing practice of mine.

Being a silent protagonist, A, as X, does not have a set personality. However, there are patterns. Firstly, as any semi-silent protagonist, A is a reactive character. He does not start incidents, he only responds to situations, presented by the Sephirah, as they arise. He does not actively seek out new information, merely going about the routine of expanding departments, but expresses curiosity when information is presented to him.

I'm aware fandom likes to characterize X and A differently, likely because they are initially presented as different characters. I, on the other hand, would like to pose the theory that they are more similar than expected.

I believe that A is also a reactive character, rather than active. Despite the fandom wiki describing him as stubborn, the goal A pursues with such fervor, the completion of the Seed of Light, is not actually a goal he set for himself. Carmen is the one who set this goal for him by leaving him her legacy.

Throughout the backstory we get relating to the Cogito Project, A is Carmen's assistant, whereas Carmen is the driving researcher. This is how many of the City's inhabitants seem to be; going with the flow of goals set for them by superiors. Yes I will get into his attachment to Carmen later.

The above is not to say A isn't stubborn. Once he has accepted a goal as his own, he will pursue it at all costs, as is obvious from any and all flashbacks leading to horrible deaths. But the point isn't his pursuit of the goal, but where that goal comes from. Even Lobcorp itself supports this, despite what Hokma may say; A as X follows the "simple" task of managing the Corp's day to day activities, and executes any mission given to him by the Sephirah. He outranks them, and doesn't actually need to do their missions, but does so anyway. Players are driven by the reward offered by those missions, of course, and A might be the same in that regard. Nonetheless, at no point in gameplay do you do anything somebody else hasn't told you to.

The overarching narrative of the Script would be the most obvious example. Every single person in the game follows the script, whether they know it or not.

Lastly on this note, a phrase we hear attributed to A, "Machines must behave as machines." Now, Angela may be attached to this phrase because it bears significance to herself as a machine, and informs most of A's unjust treatmeant of her. However, what if it doesn't just apply to machines? The phrase reads as such, "Everyone must act according to their own role."

2. A, Carmen, and the disease of the mind

So, A will at any cost pursue goals Carmen set for him. Question is, why? The obvious answer would be saying he's in love with her, which like, true. But also, how did Carmen come to be so precious to him?

Let us return to the comparison, "This is how many of the City's inhabitants seem to be." We don't really know why exactly most characters joined Carmen, excluding mainly Daniel and Benjamin. But this does not mean we can't have theories.

Carmen's ideal was curing the "disease of the mind." What is the disease? Complete hopelessness. The inability to form aspirations and dreams, to think of a better future. A is a very reactive character who does not set goals for himself. Therefore, I personally conclude, that initially, Carmen's ideology resonated with him because he could identify with the disease.

This is the point where I start rewatching Lobcorp story clips. Dear god.

So, by briefly binging day 27 onward, I've come up with lines that very much support this lil theory of mine:

First, from Carmen, a description of the disease, "People lock away their own potential."

Second, a line from Angela, after the memory synchronization, "You've locked yourself in this prison without bars."

Carmen describes A as humble, and Benjamin thinks he is warm. If I suppose A was one of the diseased initially, Carmen would be the catalyst for this change. Carmen was someone with big aspirations, with plans to heal what is wrong with the City, and it gave him hope. He was one of the diseased, but through time with Carmen, with that relentless optimistic spirit, he may have been cured, for a time. It's not a stretch to say that she was his light.

But lor shows us what happens when the seed of light sprouts wrong, doesn't it? It distorts. A grasped hope for the first time and then it is ruthlessly crushed. Carmen was everything. Yes, A is described as a jack-of-all-trades, as a genius in all pursuits he puts his mind to, but what does that matter in the face of someone who can unite people? Who can give them hope of a better world? Who can inspire them to actually use the talents they have?

And what kind of pressure is it to put the legacy of a messiah in the hands of the diseased?

3. A and the Perception Filter: A is weak to White damage

No, I am serious about that. He's extremely weak mentally. Obviously death of a loved one is a changing experience for absolutely anybody, but Carmen's death destroyed him.

Not only did he refuse to confide this grief to anyone and bottled it up, now everybody looked to him to lead the project, but he just isn't Carmen. He isn't an ambitious person, he doesn't have the same optimism, he can't bring people together, but people expected him to, and he failed. Hard.

While he was without a doubt talented in science, he was also just an average guy.

After her death, A grew to hate humans. He lost trust in them. He refused to confide in anyone, and be confided in by anyone. Thus, the team fell apart.

In both lobcorp and lor, we get interesting tidbits about precations taken to protect the manager.

Firstly, Lobcorp's perception filter. The cartoony art-style of the game is a result of the game being in first person. Through the eyes of the manager, everything is cartoony!

This is a measure undertaken to specifically protect the manager's psyche. Angela tells us that, before it was deployed, the manager would frequently go insane, one notable incident including the manager trying to hang himself. When we first hear this, the previous managers and X are still separate in our minds. However, they're all A! A went insane multiple times without it.

This is understandable, considering that employees also frequently go insane and try to kill both themselves and others. But they're there in action, confronting the Abnormalities directly. Just watching them made the manager go mad. They could not handle the responsibility for the employees' deaths.

In lor, Angela explains why she picked the Rabbit Team from R Corp as their main contractor instead of any other team. One team was simply too big for L Corp's narrow hallways, and the other team... dealt in psychic damage. It was simply too big of a risk for the manager. But the manager is always secure behind the cameras. Would that teams methods just be that brutal visually, or would their attacks have reached the manager?

Combined with his immense grief at all of his friends and coworkers dying in part because of him, A cannot bear to look at death.

4. A's greatest flaw: Avoidance

A common thread during Core Meltdown flashbacks: A refuses to look at suffering. He just can't. Whether it be looking away from Elijah writhing on the floor or hanging up on Daniel's panicked report of death.

This is actually the thing Angela takes the biggest issue with, and what hurt her most. A would never look at her, acknowledge her, and she did not understand why. But I think A did not refuse to look at her out of maliciousness. Rather, it was out of grief over Carmen. He could not look at her without being reminded of what he lost.

Angela's creation came about because A wanted someone to guide him, someone like Carmen. He threw himself into the project to the point it made Benjamin happy that A was passionate about anything again. But as soon as the project he distracted himself with is complete, he is filled with regret. Carmen cannot be replicated, and he breaks again.

Furthermore, tying this back to my first point about A being a reactive person, we see Angela take charge over A. She's the one recruiting employees and leading the business. It was likely a relief for him to be able to step down from the leading position.

But avoiding it made everything worse. He did not act when he saw Elijah's unchecked ambition, he did not act beyond a simple check at Gabriel's decay, he gave Giovanni the same hope he clung to to no avail, et cetera et cetera.

Avoiding his problems is making them worse and sending everything down the drain (including his psyche), so he deals with it the only way he knows how, avoiding them more!

Biggest example of A's big avoidance problem as his psyche crumbles: the memory wipe. A, in perhaps his one singular moment of acknowledging his emotions, recognizes that he is incapable of fulfilling the Script in his current state. His grief is just too much.

By erasing his own memory, he could start fresh without his grief, because he might've really killed himself otherwise. His suffering became bigger and bigger, and he coped by avoiding it.

The memory wipe allowed him to distangle his problems. Through his interactions with the Sephirah (which I will not individually detail for the sake of my sanity and because I dumped all this on a friend on discord already), he can deal with and actually process his issues one at a time.

As the motto describes, only by facing the fear can he build the future. Only by finally facing his grief and acknowleding it, seeing that the past cannot be changed and he has no choice to move forward, can he actually do so.

5. The Sephirah as ghosts

Lobotomy Corporation feels like a ghost story. I've touched upon this in my previous A post.

As you reach the Corp's lower levels, there are less Sephirah. First there are four. They act like normal employees, and do not breach into the story's underbelly until you reach their core supressions and the facade breaks. Second, counting Tiphereth as one, there are three. They still go about their duties, but they know what they are. Third, there are two, and the facade is gone. They know what they are, and they will tell you about the sins of the past.

And finally, you reach Keter, and there is only one.

This gradual decay of the facade is what really gets to me. I said that by interacting with the Sephirah, A deals with his issues one by one, but that's what the Sephirah are, in this case. Representations.

The people the Sephirah used to be are dead, and the Sephirah are their ghosts. The core supression involve putting these ghosts to rest. Doesn't it match the progression of a typical ghost story? Find the ghost, find what they used to be, and help them move on.

So, if everyone is a ghost, then A is alone.

But, behind the scenes, the Sephirah are still there. They are still people, and they have changed for the better, too. As always, A simply does not look.

(Does he even see the good others see in him? Does he look away from praise, too? Did he even realize Benjamin's admiration for him? Will we ever know?)

6. A's end.

A's progression of moving on would be fine and dandy if it did not end as thus: A does kill himself.

A sees himself beyond the point of no return. Everyone is dead. He is alone. Carmen is never coming back. He can't call it quits now, or else everything has been in vain. (Even if the last days show us a part of him wants to just quit, so badly.)

So, there's only one thing left to do: follow the Script to its ending. Fulfill Carmen's legacy at all costs. Death as the ultimate release.

This is the point where I admit I do not like the death as release trope. But the game does a good enough job as presenting it as the only option A had, or the only option he saw himself as having.

However, I've mentioned it before, I'll mention it again: A was not alone. Death was his release, but he left wreckage. In order to end his own suffering, he inflicted the same pain he went through on others.

Throughout the game, he moves on and pushes through. The ending shows that in reality... he didn't.

At least in lor the characters stick together and help each other heal.

This has been most of my thoughts on A, amounting to my longest analysis post ever, having taken me approximately two and a half hours to complete, and clocking in at 2337 words including up to this paragraph.

Thank you anon for giving me the incentive to verbalize all of this, so I can finally be at ease having inflicted my thoughts on everybody else.

#Feli gets asked #lobotomy corporation #ayin #library of ruina #also i saw apparently another fandom besides lc uses the ayin tag which is just fun to watch honestly #many characters could rival this word vomit probably but as i said i already inflicted most of my thoughts abt netz on my good pal borgor #thank you borgor for dragging me back into projmoon stuff. also curse you terribly #long post #Feli speaks